When in the second half of the 19th century newspapers and illustrated books became popular and widespread thanks to improvements in printing technology, many artists found their base to spread their skills. The official time span of the Golden Age of Illustration is said to be from 1880s to 1920s, but it varied a little bit between Europe and America.
While European illustrators were influenced mostly by the Pre-Raphaelites, Art Nouveau and Post-Impressionists (especially by Les Nabis, a group of Parisian artists), their American colleagues focused around Howard Pyle's Brandywine School of American Illustration in the Brandywine Valley.
Amongst the most popular artists of this time we find Arthur Rackham (UK), Howard Pyle (US), Ivan Bilibin (Russia), Theodor Kittelsen (Norway), Edmund Dulac (France), John Bauer (Sweden), Beatrix Potter (UK), N.C. Wyeth (US), Sulamith Wülfing (Germany) or Florence Harrison (UK, considered also as Pre-Raphaelite). But there were many, many more.
You can see a lot of people strongly inspired or influenced by the Golden Age of Illustration. Alan Lee, for example, or Shirley Barber. The Golden Age illustrations represent many diffrent styles, so everybody can find something interesting and inspirational among them, and yet - despite the diffrences, there's something ephemeral that escapes your senses, but it connects them all.
We also have a lot of fine artists around deviantART, who are visually influenced by those who used to create around 100 years ago - some of their works you could see in this article. Don't forget to check the groups listed below, which are focused around this age, around its specific representants or about illustration in general.
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`anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
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Voila! Paris deviantMEET Wrap Up
Illustration is no more everywhere, photography is here to illustrate most of the daily newspaper and books.
But the quantity of art books about specific subjects, artists, film and game concept arts is always growing and deviantart is clearly a place where you can find the modern face of illustration.
Peoples continue to love illustration and recognize it as art, perhaps even more than modern art.
With the development of cinema and game industry the need of illustration is in a constant growth, we continue to need more and more artist to create universe, characters, and illustrations of them, they are not the front page in the media but for illustration lovers the quantity of incredible artworks produce today is a real pleasure
Just give me some time and I will need some help to make it in proper english, it's not my native language