{Jessie Willcox Smith}

Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863-1935) is one of my favourite artist, i specially love her artworks of mothers and daughters. She was an United States Illustrator famous for her works in women´s magazine and books for childrens. Jessie was among the most gifted of the students of Howard Pyle, and she took to heart his precept of (loosely put) studying a particular subject thoroughly, and conversely, painting what one knows best in order to bring the subject alive. Quite early, she settled on exploring the universe of the child, and did so with great sensitivity and tenderness over the first 30 years of this century.

           Her mature work in no way resembles her teacher's, but bears more affinity to that of Edward Penfield and Toulouse-Lautrec and other poster artists, echoing the contemporary graphic approach with its emphasis on a spare but expressive charcoal line, somewhere between the fluidity of Art Nouveau and the boxiness of the Arts & Crafts movement. This style, together with excellent draughtsmanship, and her strongly designed compositions, (often unusual because of their view from the child's perspective) inspired a school of followers. Smith worked most comfortably with charcoal, often adding watercolor washes, occasionally varnishing over the drawing to add highlights in oil.

            Smith was a prolific book illustrator, and remarkably, many of these beautiful volumes are in print today, probably bought as much for adults' nostalgia as for their relevance to children. Her magazine covers, given little attention by her bibliographer Edward Nudelman, are no less important. Like her illustrations of verse, they tend to depict quintessential moments of childhood: playing with blocks, fear of the dark, etc., so they function quite well as pictures apart from their original connection with text. Through her pictures of children, whether illustrations for fairy tales or of simple domestic scenes, Smith changed and enlarged the appreciation of children in American popular culture by her enormously sympathetic portrayals.
Look her work: