April A to Z Challenge Theme: Picture This! Traditional Fairy Tale Illustrators
Jessie Wilcox Smith illustrated Mother Goose, nursery tales, and popular authors during America’s Golden Age of Illustration. Her watercolors filled the popular magazines (Colliers, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Scribners…) and 60 books, including Alcott’s Little Women, Longfellow’s Evangeline, and Johanna Spyrie’s Heidi. Like Elinore Abbott, she was a modern, educated “New Woman,” a student of Howard Pyle, a member of Philadelphia’s Plastic Club, and secure in her career.
A painter of mothers and children, she said, “”A child will always look directly at anyone who is telling a story; so while I paint I tell tales marvelous to hear.”