How Maurice Sendak developed his style
Maurice Sendak could look at his early books and name every artist he took from.
He picked up Charlotte and The White Horse. “I immediately see the walls covered with drawings of William Blake and Marc Chagall.”
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present? “Winslow Homer.”
Seven Tales from Andersen? “All the gothic artists in the entire world are shoved into this little book.”
Sendak worked in his New York City apartment surrounded by images of his favorite painters, constantly changing them “to keep in the mood of whatever work I’m working on.”
He drew to music, switching recordings endlessly until he found “the right color” from Haydn or Mozart or Wagner.
He kept shelves of art books showing Wilhelm Busch’s illustrations, Goya’s drawings, and Grandville’s fables.
For years, you could see all his loves in his finished work.
Then came Where the Wild Things Are.
“I like to think that The Wild Things comes to a kind of more myself look than almost anything I’ve done up to this day. I can see all the various artists in it, but happily they’ve come to a blend. Although I will always be influenced by other artists and always wanna be influenced by other artists, I feel my style is beginning to gel.”
Gel.
“The art of illustrating is like any other art, which is an art of growing up into oneself.”
(Source: Maurice Sendak Weston Woods Interview | 1966)