Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Fairy Tale-A-Day: The Snow Queen & Snow White



Hi Everyone! So I'm still figuring out how to structure my fairy tale posts...but I wanted to let you know that I added more images to my Snow White Pinterest board which you can find here: http://pinterest.com/illuminate90/snow-white-past-and-present/

And I created a board for The Snow Queen which you can find here: http://pinterest.com/illuminate90/the-snow-queen/

Here are some of the new images I found for Snow White and for The Snow Queen:

How about comparing these two images of Snow White's mother:


They are so different Charles Santore's version on top has much more light, it's streaming in on Snow White's mother and there is a sense of hope, something to come, her face is not as sad for she has already seen the three drops of blood and garnered her inspiration for a wish for a child.  On the other hand, Trina Schart Hyman's work is a bit darker, sadder, less hopeful in part because the mother has yet to see the three drops of blood, she is lost in thought still.  Hyman's mother looks more like she's been in depression, struggling while Santore's mother is so perfectly put together.

And two images from The Snow Queen of Gerda and the reindeer (sorry if there was a random image here earlier instead of the Dulac illustration, I've fixed it!):


The image on top is from Edmund Dulac and on the bottom from Errol le Cain.  The two images present startling differences in their depictions of Gerda and her escape on the reindeer.  Both are beautiful images, but in my head this scene looked more stylistically how Dulac chose to show it, especially in terms of what Gerda is wearing for example.  She is in a little girl's dress, a bit tattered, no shoes; she looks a bit to almost regal in Cain's depiction.  It's interesting that he chose to represent the robbers in a Gypsy/Arabian Nights type flare, for that's not implied at all in the written story.

That was fun, it felt like a picture study/slide comparison from art history, except with illustrations!  

What do you think about these images? Do you prefer one more than the other, how do the stylistic differences impact your relation to that moment in the story?

4 comments:

  1. I think I need to research this story more.
    I don't know what comes of the loss of blood.
    I think I like both moms.
    But for some reason I connect with the colors and style of the second mom even though she is sadder.
    Great post.

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    1. I do to! I think it's perhaps because she's more realistically depicted, not in terms of style because they are both realistic, but in the details, we related to her more because the other mom looks more like royalty and just more perfect I think.

      I'm hoping to write my research paper for my fairy tales class on Snow White, so I'll soon be doing more research on the story as well :) I'm still not sure what direction I'm going to go in but I'm hoping to work with this fairy tale!

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  2. I haven't a favorite. I love seeing all the different artist renderings of fairy tales! The Snow Queen is my favorite Andersen story, though. I love the original tale. It's so strange and wonderful and Scandinavian. And I like snow...

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    1. I completely agree! It's so amazing to see the way so many different illustrators interpret the same words and then create such different interpretations through art. And I'm reading the original for the first time, a bit slowly because I'm reading it with my little brother, but your adjectives wonderfully describe it :)

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