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This etching from David Hockney’s celebrated Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio depicts the famous story ‘Rumpelstilzchen’. Hockney invented this composition in which Rumpelstiltskin is dancing round the fire on a cooking spoon singing ‘Rumpelstiltskin is my name’. The antagonist of the Grimm Brothers’ eponymous fairy tale, is pictured here at the moment of his escape from the queen. After helping a desperate maiden spin straw into gold in exchange for a promise, he has returned to claim that now-queen’s first-born child. Her only hope is to guess his name, and when she speaks it aloud, he flies into a rage and escapes on a soup ladle. Hockney emphasizes the creature’s diminutive stature by placing him on an outsized spoon against a menacing, inky background. There’s a sense of a set or stage, of puppetry or of silhouettes, that is enhanced by how the artist has defined the cooking fire in shades of grey that look like layered cutouts.
Riding around on a cooking spoon (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) 1969
Etching, aquatint, and drypoint on W S Hodgkinson paper
Plate 6.5 x 9.9 in / 16.4 x 25.2 cm
Paper 17.75 x 16 in / 45.09 x 40.64 cm
Unique publisher’s copy aside from the edition of 400 books and 100 portfolios
Small discoloration on left of sheet, light crease along lower edge lefthand side.
