Lisa Mertz

The Fredonia Shakespeare Club held its 16th meeting of the 2024-25 season at the home of Judi Lutz Woods on Feb. 13. Under new business, the incoming officers conducted a vote on the theme for the 2025-26 season. The group selected World Heritage Sites as the subject for their papers next season. The final act of the current officers will be the Shakespeare Birthday lunch set for April 17.

In concert with this year’s theme, Children’s Literature, Lisa Mertz presented her paper on the Golden Age of Women Illustrators for Children’s Literature.

From the 1860s to the 1930s there was a great flowering of the illustrator’s art. Kate Greenaway, Jessie Willcox Smith, Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, and the Robinson brothers revolutionized the art of children’;s book illustration during this period. This presentation focused on ten representative women illustrators of the Golden Age.

The rise of the middle class and the advent of public education produced an affluent and literate audience. The evolution of printing techniques allowed for the creation of accurate and inexpensive reproductions of art. Inexpensive, quality books and magazines became available leading to high demand for new illustrated volumes.

In Women Illustrators of the Golden Age (2020), Mary Carolyn Waldrep wrote: “A career in illustration represented an ideal opportunity for women in post-Victorian society. Every well-bred girl was schooled in the arts of sketching and drawing, and by working at home, a woman’s modesty could remain uncompromised. Successful competition in a world dominated by male artists, however, called for determination as well as talent.”

Women artists founded their own art associations. The Plastic Club, for example, founded in 1897 by Emily Sartain in Philadelphia for women only, is one of the oldest art clubs in the United States.  “Plastic” refers to the state of an unfinished work of art. Illustrators and artists such as Elizabeth Shippen Green, Elenore Abbott, and Jessie Willcox Smith were members of The Plastic Club devoted to promoting “art for art’s sake.” 

Englishwoman Kate Greenaway was one of the first women to make a living as an illustrator. She was known for the fashions she created for the children. Liberty of London adapted her drawings. A generation of mothers who embraced the Arts and Crafts movement dressed their daughters in Kate Greenaway dresses and bonnets.

Jessie Willcox Smith (Philadelphia) illustrated over 60 books including Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. Elenore Abbott was an American book illustrator, scenic designer, and painter. She was one of the most prolific illustrators of the Golden Age.

Beatrix Potter is well-known for the Tales of Peter Rabbit. She created other animal characters as well, many enjoyed today. Jessie Marion King was one of the Glasgow Girls of Scotland, part of the international Art Nouveau movement. In 1911 King and her husband E.A. Taylor opened the Sheiling Atelier School in Paris.

In 1930, Margaret Evans Price along with her husband, Irving L. Price, Herman J. Fisher, and silent partner Helen Schelle, Margaret co-founded the Fisher-Price toy company. She served as the first art director, designing pull toys based on the characters from her children’s literature illustrations.

Australian Ida Rentoul Outhwaite collaborated with her sister on a number of stories of children having magical adventures in the Australian bush. After World War II Ida said, “the war stopped the taste for fairies — in parents anyhow — and the fairies fled, appalled at the bomb.”

Londoner Mabel Lucie Attwell received many commissions for children’s books, including Mother Goose, Alice in Wonderland, Water Babies, and an abridged edition of Peter Pan and Wendy written by May Byron.

Florence Scovel Shinn and her husband Everett Shinn moved to New York City, where they became part of the Ashcan School of realistic painters. After they divorced, she developed an interest in spirituality and metaphysics and became an influential lecturer and author. Elizabeth Shippen Green and Florence Scovel Shinn became the first women to be elected Associate Members of the Society of Illustrators even though women were not allowed to be full members. In 1905, Green won the Mary Smith Prize (now defunct but once prestigious) at the annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1994, she was elected posthumously to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame.

Club members enjoyed a collection of snacks and cake provided by Mertz. Tea and coffee were served by Dr. Leanna McMahon.