Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland

First edition.  142pp, generously illustrated in full colour (including 45 colour plates).  Laminted, illustrarted card covers.  Illustrated endpapers.  4to.  Gentle edge wear to card covers else neat, clean, bright and tight throughout.

An exhibition catalogue produced to co-incidence with an exhibition of Charles Blackman’s Alice in Wonderland series of paintings held at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia in 2006, including full reproductions of Blackman’s paintings and essays and articles on the artist, his work and life.

Charles Blackman was an Australia artist.  He grew up in a home without books so his first exposure to the inspirational story of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderful was via an audio book which is blind wife had borrowed from a library for the blind.  As such, he experienced the story without the classic illustrations of Sir  John Tenniel which for many shape and colour the Alice stories, leaving room for genuinely original interpretation.  Like much of Blackman’s work, the paintings are suffused with dreamlike images tinged with mystery and macabre.