Jessie Willcox Smith (September 6, 1863 – May 3, 1935) was an American illustrator during the Golden Age of American illustration. She was considered "one of the greatest pure illustrators". A contributor to books and magazines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Smith illustrated stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal. She had an ongoing relationship with Good Housekeeping, which included a long-running Mother Goose series of illustrations and also the creation of all the Good Housekeeping covers from December 1917 to 1933. Smith illustrated over sixty books, including notable works like Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.
Jessie Willcox Smith was born on September 6, 1863, in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the youngest daughter of Charles Henry Smith, an investment broker, and Katherine DeWitt Willcox Smith. Jessie attended private elementary schools. At sixteen, she was sent to Cincinnati, Ohio, to live with her cousins and finish her education. She trained to be a teacher and taught kindergarten in 1883. However, Smith found that the physical demands of working with children were too strenuous for her. She struggled to bend down to their level because of her back problems. Smith discovered her talent for drawing after being persuaded to attend an art lesson taught by a cousin.
In 1884, Smith attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design) and in 1885 attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia under the supervision of Thomas Eakins and Thomas Anshutz. It was under Eakins that Smith began to use photography as a resource in her illustrations. Although Eakins' demeanor could be difficult, particularly with female students, he became one of her first major influences. Smith's illustration Three Little Maidens All in a Row was published in the St. Nicholas Magazine in May 1888, while she was still a student at the Pennsylvania Academy. Illustration was one artistic avenue through which women could earn a living at the time. Creating illustrations for children's books or of family life was considered an appropriate career for woman artists because it drew upon maternal instincts. Alternatively, fine art that included life drawing was not deemed "ladylike". Illustration partly became viable as a result of improved color printing processes and a resurgence of book design in England.
Smith graduated from PAFA in June 1888. The same year, she was hired for an entry-level position in the advertising department of the Ladies' Home Journal. Smith's responsibilities included finishing rough sketches, designing borders, and preparing advertising art for the magazine. In this role, she illustrated Mary Wiley Staver's 1892 poetry collection New and True.
In 1894, while working at Ladies' Home Journal, Smith enrolled in classes taught by Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute, now Drexel University. She was in his first class, which was almost 50% female. Pyle pushed many artists from Smith's generation to fight for the right to illustrate for major publishing houses. He worked closely with many artists he believed to be "gifted". Smith later wrote a speech stating that working with Pyle swept away "all the cobwebs and confusions that so beset the path of the art-student." The speech was later compiled in the 1923 work "Report of the Private View of Exhibition of the Works of Howard Pyle at the Art Alliance". She studied with Pyle until 1897.
While studying at Drexel, Smith met Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, both of whom had similar talents and mutual interests. They formed a lifelong friendship, sharing a studio on Philadelphia's Chestnut Street and working together. Oakley and Smith illustrated Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, published in 1897. Their teacher, Howard Pyle, helped to secure this first commission for the two artists.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Smith's career flourished. She illustrated a number of books and magazines and created an advertisement for Ivory soap. Her works were published in Scribner's, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Weekly, and St. Nicholas Magazine. She won an award for Child Washing. Green, Smith, and Oakley became known as "The Red Rose Girls" after the Red Rose Inn in Villanova, Pennsylvania, where they lived and worked together for four years beginning in the early 1900s. They leased the inn, where they were joined by Oakley's mother, Green's parents, and Henrietta Cozens, who managed the gardens and inn. Alice Carter wrote about the women in The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love for an exhibition of their work at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Museum Director Laurie Norton Moffatt said, "These women were considered the most influential artists of American domestic life at the turn of the twentieth century. Celebrated in their day, their poetic, idealized images still prevail as archetypes of motherhood and childhood a century later."
Green and Smith illustrated the calendar, The Child, in 1903. Smith exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts that year and won the Mary Smith Prize. When the artists lost the lease on the Red Rose Inn in 1905, a farmhouse was remodeled by Frank Miles Day for them in West Mount Airy, Philadelphia. They named their new shared home and workplace "Cogslea", drawn from the initials of their surnames and that of Smith's roommate, Henrietta Cozens.
As educational opportunities opened up to women in the later 19th century, women artists joined professional enterprises, and also founded their own art associations. But artwork by 'lady artists' was considered inferior. To help overcome that stereotype, women became "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting their work as part of the emerging image of the educated, modern and freer "New Woman". Artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives."
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, about 88% of the subscribers to the 11,000 American magazines and periodicals were women. As more women entered the artistic community, publishers hired women to create illustrations that depicted the world through women's perspectives. Other successful illustrators were Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, Rose O'Neill, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley.
Opposed to submitting work for advertisements, Smith preferred to illustrate covers and stories, which bore her signature. Smith was particularly known for her illustrations and advertising posters featuring children and women, which appealed to millions of people.
According to the National Museum of American Illustration, Smith is regarded by many as the "greatest children's book illustrator". Her endearing portrayals of children have drawn comparisons to Mary Cassatt's work.
Smith was a member of Philadelphia's The Plastic Club (founded in 1897), which was established to promote "Art for art's sake" and to provide a means for artists to encourage one another professionally and create opportunities to sell their works.
Other members included Elenore Abbott, Violet Oakley, and Elizabeth Shippen Green. All of the women who founded it were students of Howard Pyle.
In 1903, the Society of Illustrators elected Florence Scovel Shinn and Elizabeth Shippen Green as its first women members. Smith, Oakley, and May Wilson Preston became members the following year. They were associate members until 1920, when they were made full members of the organization.
In 1905 she was one of seven leading artists who contracted to work exclusively for Collier's. The others were Charles Dana Gibson, Maxfield Parrish, A. B. Frost, Frank Xavier Leyendecker, E. W. Kemble, and Frederic Remington.