SMITH, Jessie Willcox

“originality … beauty … finesse … skill”

One of America’s best-loved illustrators, Jessie Willcox Smith was a key figure during the Golden Age of American Illustration.  A prolific book and magazine illustrator of the late 19^th and early 20th centuries, Smith is generally considered to have significantly informed the development of illustration and particularly to have contributed to the rise in access and exposure for women artists.

Born in Philadelphia, Smith originally trained as a kindergarten teacher, but left when she was 20 to attend a series of art colleges, finally enrolling in classes taught by Howard Pyle, often thought of as the father of American illustration.  She was strongly influenced by Pyle’s style, incorporating his romantic idealism into her own work. Whilst studying under Pyle, Smith became friends with fellow students and artists, Violet Oakley and Elizabeth Shippen Green and this group of women illustrators became known as The Red Rose Girls.  

From the turn of the century onwards, Smith achieved significant commercial success, illustrating almost 40 books, including Heidi, The Water Babies, At the back of the North Wind and A Child’s Garden of Verses. She also designed every cover of Good Housekeeping for 15 consecutive years.

In 1903 the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts awarded the Mary Smith Prize to Jessie Willcox Smith for A Mother’s Days which showed “the most originality of subject, beauty of design and drawing, and finesse of colour and skill of execution"

In 1991, Smith was the second woman to be inducted into ‘The Hall of Fame’ of the ‘Society of Illustrators’. Of the small group of women inductees, three of them were members of The Red Rose Girls.

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