Jessie Willcox Smith

American illustrator

Jessie Willcox Smith (September 6, 1863 – May 3, 1935) was an American illustrator during the Golden Age of American illustration. She was considered "one of the greatest pure illustrators". A contributor to books and magazines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Smith illustrated stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal. She had an ongoing relationship with Good Housekeeping, which included a long running Mother Goose series of illustrations and also the creation of all of the Good Housekeeping covers from December 1917 to 1933. Among the more than 60 books that Smith illustrated were Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and An Old Fashioned Girl, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.

Jessie Willcox Smith was born on September 6, 1863, in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the youngest girl born to Charles Henry Smith, an investment broker, and Katherine DeWitt Willcox Smith. or cousin's art classes, Smith realized she had a talent for drawing.

In 1884 In May 1888, while Smith was still at the Pennsylvania Academy, her illustration Three Little Maidens All in a Row was published in the St. Nicholas Magazine. Illustration was one artistic avenue in which women could make a living at the time. She was in his first class, which was almost 50% female. The speech was later compiled in the 1923 work "Report of the Private View of Exhibition of the Works of Howard Pyle at the Art Alliance". She studied with Pyle through 1897.

While studying at Drexel, Smith met Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, who had similar talent and with whom she had mutual interests. They developed a lifelong friendship, sharing a studio on Philadelphia's Chestnut Street and working together. Green, Smith, and Oakley became known as "The Red Rose Girls" after the Red Rose Inn in Villanova, Pennsylvania, where they lived and worked together for four years beginning in the early 1900s. for an exhibition of their work at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Museum Director Laurie Norton Moffatt said, "These women were considered the most influential artists of American domestic life at the turn of the twentieth century. Celebrated in their day, their poetic, idealized images still prevail as archetypes of motherhood and childhood a century later." Green and Smith illustrated the calendar, The Child in 1903. When the artists lost the lease on the Red Rose Inn in 1904, a farmhouse was remodeled by Frank Miles Day for them in West Mount Airy, Philadelphia. They named their new shared home and workplace "Cogslea", drawn from the initials of their surnames and that of Smith's roommate, Henrietta Cozens. Artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives."

Smith preferred to create illustrations for covers and stories, and also illustrated advertisements, which bore her signature. Smith was particularly known for her illustrations and advertising posters of children and women, which appealed to millions of people. According to the National Museum of American Illustration, many say Smith is the "greatest children's book illustrator" and her work has been compared to Mary Cassatt's for her endearing portrayal of children. Smith was a member of Philadelphia's The Plastic Club (founded 1897), established to promote "Art for art's sake" and to provide a means to encourage one another professionally and create opportunities to sell their works. Other members included Elenore Abbott, Violet Oakley, and Elizabeth Shippen Green. All the women who founded it had been students of Howard Pyle. In 1903, the Society of Illustrators elected Florence Scovel Shinn and Elizabeth Shippen Green as its first women members. Smith, Oakley, and May Wilson Preston became members the following year. They were associate members until 1920, when they were made full members of the organization. According to The New York Times in 1910, Smith made about US$12,000 ($12000.0 in 1910 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years today) per year and, like Norman Rockwell and J. C. Leyendecker, became popular as a "media star". In 1911 both of her parents and her former teacher and promoter, Howard Pyle, died and Elizabeth Shippen Green married Huger Elliott. Oakley had a major mural project in the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg that kept her away from Cogslea for extended periods. Smith had a 16 room house and studio that she called Cogshill built on property near Cogslea. She lived in this house, her final home, with Cozens, her aunt, and her brother. efn|Violet Oakley remained at Cogslea until the 1960s.]] Over the next several years she continued to create illustrations for magazines, including a series of Mother Goose illustrations printed in Good Housekeeping which were black and white until mid 1914 when they were printed in color. Her illustrations were reproduced in the book The Jessie Willcox Smith Mother Goose by Dodd, Mead, and Company. This book, reflecting her continued theme of mother and child in a realistic portrayal, was a commercial success. Biographer Edward D. Nudelman wrote, "The cover illustration for this book, showing two children nestled beneath the wings of Mother Goose, is one of Smith's most pleasing and warm images. The serenity portrayed in the posture and expression of the children, along with the material concern of Mother Goose, gives evidence of the genius of Smith." Smith had a knack for painting children, persuasively using milk, cookies and fairy tales to achieve a relaxed, focused, child model. In an October 1917 Good Housekeeping article she wrote that "a child will always look directly at anyone who is telling a story; so while I paint I tell tales marvelous to hear." In 1915 Smith finished one of her most well known work, a series of pictures for Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies. She was one of the highest paid illustrators of the time, earning over $1,500 per cover. She made illustrations for Collier's magazines and of Charles Dickens' works, like Tiny Tim, Dickens' Children – Ten Children, and David Copperfield. Smith continued to create illustrations throughout her life, but she increased the number of portraits she painted beginning about 1925. She used a technique that she learned from Eakins in these later years, using photographs as a tool when creating portraits.

Smith's style changed drastically through her life. In the beginning of her career she used dark lined borders to delineate brightly coloured objects and people in a style described as "Japonesque." In later works she softened the lines and colours until they almost disappeared. Smith worked in mixed media: oil, watercolor, pastels, gouache, charcoal, whatever she felt gave her desired effect. She often overlaid oils on charcoal, on a paper whose grain or texture added an important element to the work. Her use of colour was influenced by the French impressionist painters.

Though never a travel enthusiast, Smith finally agreed to tour Europe in 1933 with Isabel Crowder, who was both Henrietta Cozens' niece and also a nurse. During her trip, her health deteriorated. Smith died in her sleep at her house at Cogshill in 1935 at the age of 71. In 1936, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts held a memorial retrospective exhibition of her works. In 1991, Smith became only the third woman to be inducted into The Hall of Fame of the Society of Illustrators. Lorraine Fox (1979) had been the first and Neysa Moran McMein (1984) was the second. Of the small group of women inducted since then, three were the members of The Red Rose Girls: Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green (1994) and Violet Oakley (1996). Smith bequeathed 14 original works to the Library of Congress' "Cabinet of American Illustration" collection to document the Golden age of illustration (1880 1920s). Smith's papers are on deposit in the collection of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.

Smith made illustrations for more than 250 periodicals, 200 magazine covers, 60 books, prints, calendars and posters from 1888 to 1932. She also painted portraits. Some of her works are listed below.