"May I Have the Pleasure, Good Housekeeping Cover"   Lot no. 4569

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By Jessie Willcox Smith (American- 1863-1935)

1926
22" x 15 3/8"
Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper laid on b
Signed Lower Right

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Titled on the reverse: May I Have the Pleasure

 
Good Housekeeping cover, November 1926

As Jessie Willcox Smith biographer S. Michael Schnessel has aptly observed, "Jessie Willcox Smith was the creator of the ideal child. She pictured a child that was without equal in reality--innocent, unblemished, never naughty, always perfect. Smith's touching, sensitive portraits of children at play won her the hearts of millions of Americans."

Smith was the predominant cover artist for Good Housekeeping during the magazine's golden period. Her charming covers were a major factor in the magazine's astounding success. Sales exceeded one million copies in the mid-1920s, and Good Housekeeping became the most profitable magazine in the Hearst Corporation's empire. The magazine was three-times more profitable than Hearst's other eight magazines combined in this era.



Explore related art collections: Magazine Covers / Children / 1920s / $100,000 & Above / Women Artists / Brandywine School

See all original artwork by Jessie Willcox Smith

ABOUT THE ARTIST

            Jessie Wilcox Smith never married, but throughout her long career, specialized in drawing and painting mothers, babies and children. Her training was acquired at the School of Design for Women, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with Thomas Eakins, and at the Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle.

            She had begun as a kindergarten teacher but turned to an art career with the stimulus and assistance of Howard Pyle. Some of her best-known illustrations were for books: Little Women, Heidi, A book of Old Stories and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. She also painted a great many illustrations for magazines such as Collier's and McClure's, and did nearly 200 covers for Good Housekeeping. For several years, she shared house and studio with two other Pyle students, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley. Working in close proximity they also strongly influenced eachother's work as well as that of several other Pyle - school women. This relationship is told in The Red Rose Girls by Alice Carter. Smith painted and exhibited widely, revieving many awards, a Silver Metal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. She was also commissioned to paint many portraits of children.

            Two other biographies, Jessie Wilcox Smith by S. Michael Schnessel, and Jessie Wilcox Smith American Illustrator by Edward D. Nudelman (who also contributed A bibliography) have been published.