Wild Things Exhibition Guide

Final Art for The Wonderful Farm
1951
Ink with white corrections on tracing paper
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation

Early Works

In the decade before the publication of his most famous book, Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak was prolific. His career-long relationship with Harper’s publishing house began in 1951 with his illustrations for French novelist Marcel Aymé’s The Wonderful Farm. He experimented with several different styles and techniques and began adding “author” to his bookmaking repertoire. Kenny’s Window was the first book he both wrote and illustrated. In it, he began exploring stories involving kids who use fantasy and imagination to grapple with very real emotions.

Author: Marcel Aymé (1902–1967)
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
The Wonderful Farm, 1st Edition
1951
Book
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951. © 1951 by Maurice Sendak

The Wonderful Farm, 1951

The Wonderful Farm tells the adventures of two girls on a farm where animals talk, a wild boar goes to school, and a hen accidentally turns into an elephant. To bring this fantastical world alive, Sendak employed pen-and-ink crosshatching, a technique originally used in wood engraving for black-and-white printing. It was particularly popular in illustrated books and magazines printed in the 1800s. By overlapping rows of lines to create lighter and darker areas, Sendak gave a sense of space and depth to the girls’ adventures.

This meticulous technique might have seemed anachronistic at a time when color was key and book illustrations were often inspired by the increasing popularity of modern artists like Matisse and Picasso, who used bold contour lines and broad areas of bright colors. But it evoked an old-world charm that was comforting to both children and adults, and crosshatching became one of Sendak’s favorite techniques.

Very Far Away
1957
Book
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957. © 1957 by Maurice Sendak

Very Far Away, 1957

For the story of Martin, a young boy who runs away and finds new friends in a bird, a horse, and a cat, Sendak separated the image in three different layers.

We can follow here the three-step process of the print: The precise line drawing gives the details of the narrative while the two more atmospheric layers in grey and brown watercolor define texture and space. The final print fuses these three steps into one image.

Maurice Sendak Studio Apartment Interview, 1966
Weston Woods Productions
Duration: 1 min. 59 sec., with sound.
Produced by Morton Schindel at Weston Woods Studios. Courtesy Objet D'Art

Listen to Maurice Sendak discuss his favorite artists of the past who have influenced his own work, including Where the Wild Things Are.

Final Art for Kenny’s Window Cover
1956
Watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation

Kenny’s Window, 1956

Kenny’s Window was the first book that Sendak, at age 28, wrote the words and created the illustrations for. Kenny, like so many of Sendak’s later characters, begins his adventures at a bedroom window.

Sendak liked to tell the story of his grandmother entertaining him by pulling a window shade up and down when he was a child, sick in bed: “It was like a magic show.”

Final Art for Little Bear Cover
1957
Ink and white corrections on paper
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation

Little Bear, 1957-1968

In his five-book partnership with author Elsie Holmelund Minarik, Sendak departed from mainstream children’s book illustration, which favored bold color and abstract design. Instead, he looked to engravings from the 1800s, which inspired the cross-hatching and Victorian-era setting of the Bears’ world.

Sendak said, “I wanted Mother Bear to be an image of warmth and strength—nothing less than motherhood itself. So, I dressed her in [voluminous] Victorian costume. … And when Little Bear sat in her lap, I had her envelop him. There couldn’t be a safer place in all the world than Mother Bear’s lap.”