Jessie Willcox Smith
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Jessie Willcox Smith (September 6, 1863 – May 3, 1935) was a United States illustrator famous for her work in magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and for her illustrations for children's books.
Born in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Smith studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, graduating in 1888. A year later, she started working in the production department of the Ladies Home Journal, for five years. She left to take classes under Howard Pyle, first at Drexel and then at the Brandywine School.
She was a prolific contributor to books and magazines during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrating stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's Weekly, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal.
Smith may be most well known for her covers on Good Housekeeping, which she painted from December 1917 through March 1933. She also painted posters and portraits. Her twelve illustrations for Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies (1916) are also well known. On Smith's death, she bequeathed the original works to the Library of Congress' "Cabinet of American Illustration" collection. (A thirteenth illustration remains in a private collection.)
Smith was close friends with the artists Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, who also studied with Pyle. Her papers are deposited in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
References
- Nudelman, Edward D. Jesse Willcox Smith: American Illustrator. Gretna, LA, Pelican Publishing, 1990.
- Nudelman, Edward D., ed. The Jesse Willcox Smith Mother Goose: A Careful and Full Selection of the Rhymes. Gretna, LA, Pelican Publishing, 1991.
