Artist:
Jessie Willcox Smith
(American, 1863 - 1935)
The Garden Wall
Medium: Charcoal, watercolor and oil on paper mounted on board
Date: 1903
Dimensions:
24 × 15 in. (61 × 38.1 cm)
Accession number: 2020.11.2
Label Copy:
Jessie Willcox Smith’s lively and enchanting depictions of children made her one of the most successful illustrators of her time. One of many women to take Howard Pyle’s classes, Smith, along with Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, became known as “The Red Rose Girls” after the Red Rose Inn in Villanova, Pennsylvania, where they lived and worked together in the early 1900s. The Garden Wall appeared as part of a pictorial of eight images telling the story of a child’s day in a garden in the December 1903 edition of Scribner’s Magazine. The popular image was sold the following year as a stand alone print.
Curatorial RemarksThe present work is one of six illustrations comprising Jessie Willcox Smith's pictorial story "The Child in a Garden," which was published in Scribner's Magazine in 1903. Other subjects in the series include The Green Door, Five O'Clock Tea, The Lily Pool, Among the Poppies and The Spruce Tree. According to Edward Nudelman, bibliographer of Jessie Willcox Smith, the illustrations for "The Child in A Garden," including the image presented here, were also reproduced as prints in 1904 by Fox, Duffield as well as pictorial postcards the following decade, issued by Reinthal and Newman (Jessie Willcox Smith: A Bibliography, pp. 169, 173), but never appeared in any of her book illustrations. (Reference: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5846358)