THE CURRENT ISSUE OF Orion was an opportunity to revisit fairy tales with fresh eyes. Why were so many of us afraid of the woods? Were wolves really so bloodthirsty, or were they just desperate to reclaim the space where they once were permitted to live? In mulling over the stories that were most formative to us, we returned to picture books, and, inevitably, to the work of Maurice Sendak, known of course for Where the Wild Things Are, though for me it was In the Night Kitchen that I loved best of all, with its giant spoons and eggplant backdrops.
And apparently we weren’t the only ones making the intuitive leap. Through Justin Schiller, a close friend of Sendak’s, we heard about a forthcoming auction of his fairy tale illustrations at Heritage Auctions in Dallas. “Sendak did not illustrate at children,” says Schiller. “He illustrated for children, for the young adults they were becoming,” which made him the perfect reader for Grimms’ fairy tales — another body of work often seen as too violent for children. (Did I mention the SS-like bakers who stick In the Night Kitchen’s Mickey in an oven?)
–Sumanth Prabhaker
Selections of Sendak’s illustrated Brothers Grimm are below, along several other of his works on fairy tales.
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- ‘(Ostrich), The Love for Three Oranges’
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- ‘Gockel Brandishing a Sword, The Tale of Gockel, Hinkel & Gackeliah’
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- ‘The Mother Goose poster’
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- ‘Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Album cover study’
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- ‘Tail Feathers from Mother Goose’
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- ‘Six Dancing Mice, Nutcracker, stage scrim study’
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- ‘Dragon Slayer … Thank you very much, What Do You Say Dear?’
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- ‘Everyone Deserves a Night at the Opera’
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- ‘Rabbit Bride, Juniper Tree’
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- ‘Nutcracker, book jacket and poster study’
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- ‘Love for Three Oranges Opera, Curtain, poster study’
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- Photo: Maurice Sendak, ‘Infant Innocence’
Images and information about all lots in the auction can be found at HA.com/8149.