Jessie willcox smith works

Jessie willcox smith little women
Jessie willcox smith twas the night before christmas
Jessie willcox smith artwork

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Jessie Willcox Smith

American illustrator

Jessie Willcox Smith
Smith c. 1900
Born	(1863-09-06)September 6, 1863 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	May 3, 1935(1935-05-03) (aged 71) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Known for	Illustrations
Movement	The Golden Age of Illustration
Awards
Elected	Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame, 1992
Years active	1880–1935

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 the Good Housekeeping covers from December 1917 to

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Jessie Willcox Smith

Biography

Jessie Willcox Smith was born and raised in Philadelphia. Smith joined her cousin in Cincinnati to attend high school and went on to briefly hold a job as a kindergarten teacher but quickly learned that childcare was not an appealing career path for her. Having tried her hand at sketching to successful results, despite a lack of prior training, she opted to pursue an education in the arts.

Smith returned to her native Philadelphia and enrolled at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, but unsatisfied with their instruction which she felt was not rigorous enough, she switched to the more intensive Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. There she studied with such notable teachers as Thomas Anschutz and Thomas Eakins. She additionally joined Howard Pyle’s class at the Drexel Institute, alongside Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, the two women who would become her dearest friends and collaborators. Having noted a similarity in their styles, Howard Pyle set up Smith and Oakley to collaborate on the 1897 illustration of

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Jessie Willcox Smith

Smith graduated in June 1888. She joined the first magazine for women, the Ladies’ Home Journal the same year. She had an entry-level position in the advertising department finishing rough sketches. She also designed borders and prepared advertising art for the magazine. During her time at the Ladies’ Home Journal, Smith enrolled in Saturday classes at Drexel University with Howard Pyle. She was in his first class at Drexel, which had almost 50% female students. Pyle pushed many artists of Smith’s generation to fight for their right to illustrate for the major publishing houses of the time. Smith said that working with Pyle swept away ‘all the cobwebs and confusions that so beset the path of the art-student.’ She stayed in his tuition until 1897.

Smith met Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley while studying at Drexel. The women shared talent, mutual interests, and lifelong friendship. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline, illustrated by Oakley and Smith, was published in 1897.

At the turn of the twentieth c