asakiyume | Entries tagged with hans christian andersen

In my childhood, we had a picturebook collection of Hans Christian Andersen fairytales illustrated by twin sisters, Anne and Janet Grahame Johnstone. I've written about them here before in the context of "The Red Shoes"--I had vivid memories of their illustrations of that story, particularly an illustration of Karen begging an executioner to cut her feet off. At the time I wrote that entry, I couldn't find that particular illustration online, but in the meantime, someone has uploaded it and a bunch of others from that story. HERE IS THE SCARY ILLUSTRATION

( behind a cut because I forgot to size it smaller )

And while I'm at it, here are several more:

THE ANGEL WILL NOT LET HER INTO CHURCH IN HER RED SHOES

( that will teach you to like pretty things!! )

What poor Karen was wearing before she got the red shoes:

( straw-lined wooden shoes )

Here she is going to church in the red shoes that she promised her grandmother she wouldn't wear (this is before she's cursed to dance and all that). Her grandmother has poor vision, so Karen wore those bright red babies ANYWAY.
( looking quite fine )

The one image I did think to resize was one I went searching for for

osprey_archer--it's not from "The Red Shoes" but from "The Wild Swans"--it's a picture of the swan brother whose nettle shirt the princess doesn't quite finish knitting, so he ends up with one arm still a swan's wing. (In the version of the story

osprey_archer read, he ended up with *two* swan wings, which is a much more significant handicap.)

Anne and Janet Grahame Johnstone wild swans illo

Out my window, thickly.

The windows were often covered with hoar-frost; then they would warm coppers on the stove and stick them on the frozen panes, where they made lovely peep-holes, as round as possible. Then a bright eye would peep through these holes, one from each window. The little boy's name was Kay, and the little girl's Gerda ...

'Look! the white bees are swarming,' said the old grandmother.

'Have they a queen bee, too?' asked the little boy, for he knew that there was a queen among the real bees.

'Yes, indeed they have,' said the grandmother. 'She flies where the swarm is thickest. She is biggest of them all, and she never remains on the ground. She always flies up again to the sky. Many a winter's night she flies through the streets and peeps in at the windows, and then the ice freezes on the panes into wonderful patterns like flowers.'

'Oh yes, we have seen that,' said both children, and then they knew it was true.

'Can the Snow Queen come in here?' asked the little girl.

'Just let her come,' said the boy, 'and I will put her on the stove, where she will melt.'
The Snow Queen, via Project Gutenberg

I've never pressed a hot coin to a frosty window, but I've melted circles by breathing on them--and then that freezes, but freezes clear.

How about that Kay! Bold and dangerous speech!

Current Music: Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno: Cumbia Sobre El Mar

Today in church one of the altar servers was wearing red ballet-slipper-style shoes with sparkles.

They were beautiful, and I was thinking, wow, church has come a long way since Hans Christian Andersen's time (different denomination, too, but let's sail by that issue), when the poor protagonist of "The Red Shoes" eventually HAS TO HAVE HER FEET CHOPPED OFF for the sin of indulging in vanity by wearing her red shoes to church. And then, even after she's repented and had her feet cut off, her bloody feet, dancing in the shoes, keep her from entering the church!

I have vivid memories of the illustrations accompanying this story from the version of HCA's fairy tales that we had when I was a kid--particularly the one of Karen, the protagonist, her hair a wild golden tangle, pleading with the executioner to cut off her feet. With much searching (a zillion people have illustrated HCA, including famous people like Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham), I found that the edition we had was called Stories from Hans Christian Andersen, illustrated by twin sisters, Anne and Janet Grahame Johnstone. They had an overly pretty, slim, stylized way of drawing people that I was fascinated by. I couldn't find the one illustration online, but I did find the one of her going into church all in white... but with the offending red shoes on. Unfortunately the person who took the photo cut off the feet (LOL), so you can't see the shoes, but you can see the glow from them:

(source)

If you click on the source link, you can get more of a sense of the illustrators' style. They had a great illustration for "The Wild Swans" of the prince who ends up still with one arm a wing, but I thought you might like this fairly hot (in an overly pretty way) picture from Tales of Greeks and Trojans: