This exhibition presents the complete series of George Whitman's pencil and watercolor drawings for the narrative poem "Goblin Market." First published in 1862, the poem is the best-known work of the English writer Christina Rossetti. Whitman's drawings appear in a 1981 edition of "Goblin Market" published by David R. Godine. Her exquisite poem and Whitman's precise, meticulous style suit each other perfectly. 

George Whitman, an accomplished illustrator and fine artist, was born in Connecticut in 1944. He received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art from Pratt Institute. He has exhibited widely and won numerous awards, and now lives and works in Philadelphia with a studio in Virginia where he was an adjunct assistant professor of art at the University of Richmond. 

When Whitman read Rossetti's masterpiece, the poem's idealized and detailed depiction of nature, mystical and mortal themes, and richly pictorial language inspired him to interpret "Goblin Market" visually. In his drawings for the poem, Whitman combines bits and pieces from the natural world (vegetation, insects, animals, and even people) to create a fantasy realm, an unfamiliar dreamlike world with new rules of perspective, size, and orientation.

George Whitman's haunting and evocative drawings capture the poem's vivid imagery and lilting rhythms, skillfully mixing the beautiful with the sinister, and the commonplace with the grotesque. His drawings, which follow the narrative sequence of this strange and subtle poem, invite viewers to lose themselves in two sisters' adventure in the mysterious goblin glen.

Whitman's drawings are on display in the Rare Book Department alongside a first edition of the poem illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and a 1933 edition illustrated by Arthur Rackham.