Fairy Godmother

"I had a dream the other night / When I was all in bed. / I thought a fairy came to me / With wings about her head. / She was my Fairy Godmother, / I knew her right away, / And I sat down upon her lap, / For I wanted her to stay."

These are the opening lines of Edith B. Sturgis’s poem "The Fairy Godmother," for which Sarah Stilwell Weber painted this work. Weber was among Howard Pyle’s most successful students, attending his classes at the Drexel Institute and his summer school in Chadds Ford. She specialized in images of children, as did many women illustrators of the period. Her artwork was highly sought after and appeared in leading publications including Scribner’s, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post, for which she created over fifty cover illustrations.

Illustration for "The Child in Fairyland," by Edith B. Sturgis. Scribner's Magazine, December, 1907