Randolph Caldecott

Randolph Caldecott , 1846-86, English artist and illustrator. He is famous for his drawings of contemporary English country life and for his charming and humorous illustrations, including those for Washington Irving's Old Christmas and Bracebridge Hall and Blackburn's Breton Folk. Perhaps his best are the colored illustrations for a series of 16 children's picture books, including The House that Jack Built and The Grand Panjandrum Himself. The Caldecott Medal for excellence in children's-book illustration is named for him.

Bibliography: See memoir by H. Blackburn (1886, repr. 1969).

Caldecott, Randolph (b Chester, 22 Mar. 1846; d St Augustine, Fla., 12 Feb. 1886). English illustrator, painter, and occasional sculptor. With Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway he ‘formed the triumvirate of great British children's illustrators of the late Victorian period…but his drawings were far less rigid than Crane's and far more humorous than Greenaway's’ (Oxford Companion to Children's Literature). His output was large, in spite of his short career and the ill health that led to his early death; he worked as a bank clerk until he was 26 and he died aged only 39 on a sketching visit to America (he suffered from rheumatic fever and encountered a surprisingly cold winter in Florida). From 1938 the American Library Association has awarded the Caldecott Medal to ‘the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children published…during the preceding year’.