Though the covers of Weird Tales are usually more well remembered by history (for obvious reasons), it should be remembered that most of the stories published within the Unique Magazine had at least one accompanying illustration. So it is with H.P. Lovecraft's "The Silver Key," which featured this piece of artwork by Hugh Rankin.
Rankin provided illustrations for dozens of stories during the 1920s and '30s, including many by Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Perhaps his most significant one may be one from "Pickman's Model," depicting a ghoul.
I can't say with absolute certainty that this is the first ever depiction of one of Lovecraft's ghouls in a publication, but I suspect that it is. That alone makes Rankin worthy of remembrance.
(I feel compelled to add Lovecraft's own drawing of a ghoul, which he drew in 1934, years after the publication of "Pickman's Model." I find it strangely charming.)
Is this Rankin connected to the animators “Rankin and Bass”?
ReplyDeleteRankin (No relation to Arthur Rankin) was Robert E. Howard's personal favorite illustrator. He was the middle child of three brothers. His older brother Carl died at the age of three. His baby brother, Raymond, died also at the age of three. Rankin was a prodigy, having won the Children's Art exhibition at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Chicago World's Fair) and getting a college scholarship from that. Rankin's father was severely deranged and attempted to murder the boy's mother, her mother, father, sister and the sister's wife with a straight razor and a gun...in an misguided attempt to reconcile with his wife. His mother died when he was 23. He built a sculpture memorial at her grave and carved his own name into it with his birth date and a space for his death. He never married.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that Rankin, with such a complex background, one that shared some thematic overlaps with Lovecraft, was the ideal man to prove that the unimaginable and unspeakable of Lovecraft could nonetheless be fully illustrated.
Ooh. I found a fascinating little profile from E. Hoffman Price of Rankin at the end of his life from Witchcraft and Sorcery:
ReplyDeletehttps://cthulhuwho1.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/e-hoffmann-prices-jade-pagoda-part-4_-hugh-rankin-e-hoffmann-price-witchcraft-and-sorcery-coven-13-number-9-1973.pdf
The brief glimpse into his quiet faithless view on death seems to mirror Lovecraft, including his gentle dismissal of Theosophy. Likewise his extremely subtle and understated allusion to the complexity of his family's mental health history.
Jim Hodges---
ReplyDeleteI am enjoying these Lovecraft retrospectives this month and look forward to more. Many thanks!
As anyone whose actually read them will tell you, there's a slew of incredible interior art in the old pulps that you miss out on entirely if you only know these stories from their later book formats. Always check out the serializations when you can - and there are scans all over the internet that make that much easier to do than it was in my youth.
ReplyDeleteE. Hoffman Price disagreed. He thought most of the artwork was crap, but that mostly stems from some artist rushing a job on a "two-handed sword" that showed the warrior wielding a single-bladed sword...with one handle for each hand, like a pruning shears!
DeleteThat Silver Key piece is beautiful. Love it.
ReplyDelete