Items Similar to Child Playing with Toy Birds and Doll - School of Jessie Willcox Smith
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 10
Anna Milo UpjohnChild Playing with Toy Birds and Doll - School of Jessie Willcox Smith1910 circa
1910 circa
About the Item
Anna Milo Upjohn was an overlooked female illustrator in the school of Jessie Willcox Smith. Her work displays a deep academic knowledge evident in her stylized illustrations of children and engaging their world. Signed lower right- 'A.M.UPJOHN" unframed. She was an assignment artist for renowned women's publications such as The Woman's Home Companion and children's books, as well as commercial assignments.s for the Red Cross. Unframed
Anna Milo Upjohn (1868–1951) was an American artist, illustrator, author, and relief worker who, late in her long career, became known for paintings, drawings, and illustrations she made for the American Red Cross. After graduating from high school, she studied art briefly in New York but obtained most of her training in Paris from Claudio Castelucho and Lucien Simon.[1] In the early years of the twentieth century, she became known both for her portraits and paintings of children and for her book and magazine illustrations. Finding herself in France at the outset of the First World War, she devoted herself to relief work first among the refugees in Paris and later among the devastated villages in France and Belgium. Having spent the first half of her adult life as an independent professional, she served as a staff artist for the American Red Cross between 1921 and 1931. She traveled extensively during her adult life and lived mostly in New York City; Ithaca, New York; and Washington, D.C.
Early life and training
During the 1870s, Upjohn's family lived with her grandfather, a well-known architect named Richard Upjohn who had retired to a scenic home in Garrison, New York. Richard Upjohn's biographer says when she was about five she would accompany him as he sketched and painted. She questioned him about his color choices and learned that artists often chose colors different from the ones present in the subjects they painted. He also showed her engravings of famous paintings, explaining what made them great and where they fell short in his view.[2] Her family was living in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin when she graduated from high school in 1887.[3] A few years later, the family moved to New York, where, in the early 1890s, she took classes at the Cooper Union Woman's Art School.[4] She began her foreign travels in 1893 and during the next few years studied art in Munich, Florence, and Paris.[5] In 1902, she took an illustration class at the National Academy of Design and the following year won the Academy's Suydam silver medal for her work.[6] Between 1909 and 1912, she studied and traveled in Europe's other major cities.[7] In 1922, Upjohn told a reporter that she had studied art "in many places, usually for a few months at a time and disconnectedly, but what counted most was the work she did in Paris under Castelucho and Lucien Simon.”[1] Born in Barcelona, Castelucho's birth name was Claudi Catelucho Diana, but he went by his surname alone. In Paris during the early years of the twentieth century, he and Simon both trained private students and both taught at two mondernist alternatives to the École des Beaux Arts: the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.[8] Upjohn did not say whether she took private lessons, classes, or both.
Career in art
Image No. 1, Anna Milo Upjohn, Young Boy Going Fishing, 1910, oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches
In 1890, at the age of twenty-one, Upjohn completed a painting of angels for St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Her uncle Richard M. Upjohn had designed the building and her father was currently its rector (having succeeded John Henry Hobart Brown his brother-in-law). Reporting on the installation of the painting, a local journalist said the angels were "finely executed." The following year, she completed another painting for the cathedral. Measuring eight by fourteen feet, it depicted adoring saints and was placed in the cancel. A local reporter said it reflected "great credit upon the artist." In 1896, Upjohn had a portrait accepted for display in the autumn exhibition at the National Academy of Design. Called an "uncompromising portrait of a lady" by a local critic, the painting was the first of her formal portraits to gain recognition.[11] A decade later, she told a reporter she was particularly proud to be included in this show. During travels to paint and study art in Europe in the 1890s, Upjohn participated in exhibitions held in Baden Baden, Paris, and Munich. In 1901, she showed paintings of children in a solo exhibition held at the gallery of the Kilohana Art League in Honolulu, Hawaii. Reviewing the show, a local critic said "One can be sanely and intelligently enthusiastic over Miss Anna M. Upjohn's child pictures. Anything more ideally perfect in this line than her "Children" and "A Child" is hard to find. Her work is unusually bold.Upjohn traveled to paint and study again during the years between 1900 and 1914. In 1910, she made a characteristic painting of a cheerful boy carrying a fishing pole (see Image No. 1, above).
She was living in Brooklyn in 1912 when she executed a commission from Cornell alumni for a portrait of her uncle, Charles Babcock, a professor of architecture (emeritus) at the university At this time, she became a member of the MacDowell Club of New York and participated one of the club's exhibitions in 1913. Reviewing this show, a critic for the New York Times singled out a painting of Scandinavian children for its good characterization and "freshness and force of color" During the next few years, Upjohn contributed frequently to MacDowell club exhibitions.In 1914, the prestigious International Studio art magazine reproduced two paintings from a then-current exhibition and its critic called her "one of the best contributors lately at the MacDowell Club".[17] The following year, a critic for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle said a painting of a child seen in a club exhibition was "one of the strongest and best types of youngsters in paint, which can be imagined."[18] During these pre-war years, she also exhibited at the Grand Central, Knoeller, Macbeth, and Anderson galleries in New York.
Subjects of commissioned formal portraits in this period include Helen Van Vechten, maker of [[Fine press}fine-press]] books; A. Cameron MacKenzie, president of Elmira College; General George Wood Wingate an early leader of the National Rifle Association and founder of a NY boys' club; Mary Williams, an Ithaca matriarch; and notables connected with Cornell University, including Andrew Dickson White, a historian and one of the founders of the university, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, an ornithologist, illustrator and artist, and the anatomist Charles Rupert Stockard
When she gave a solo exhibition at the Cornell College of Architecture in 1913, the local paper called her work "captivating" and said a painting of a Portuguese fisher girl gave "true joy" in its "fresh execution".[19] Another solo show, this time at the Arnot Gallery of Elmira College, was said to be a "beautiful exhibit" of portraits and paintings of children.In 1915, a Wisconsin seed company bought a painting she had made of her six-year-old sister at work in a garden. The company made posters of the painting to use as promotional materials.
Image No. 2, Anna Milo Upjohn, Traversez la Vie Comme des Petits Soldats Garçons et Filles, illustration, Junior Red Cross News, September 1919
Upjohn's career changed abruptly at the outbreak of the First World War. Happening to be in Paris when war was declared, she volunteered her services to the local American Episcopal church in its efforts to help the refugees who poured into the city.On her return to New York in 1915, she solicited funds to support relief organizations and sold her drawings and paintings to raise money for them.[28][29] She returned to France in 1916 and spent most of her time doing relief work there and in Belgium during the rest of the war. When, in 1917, the Paris-based Children's Bureau of the American Red Cross (ARC) asked her to make paintings for a series of health posters, she was reluctant to take time away from her relief work but she made five canvases for them all the same.In 1919, Upjohn visited war-devastated countries to make drawings and paintings for the Junior Red Cross (JRC). The ARC had set up the American Junior Red Cross in 1917 with three main objectives: to educate American children about the war and its impact on European children, to obtain donations of clothing and other goods, and to solicit donations for relief work Upjohn's role was to make works of art depicting European children in a favorable light: cheerful and friendly despite their difficult circumstances. In September 1919, a striking drawing by Upjohn appeared in the first issue of the ARC's Junior Red Cross News with the caption, "This picture of boys and girls of France, with their beloved Tricolor, served as a poster in the Child Welfare Exhibits held in various cities of France a few months ago by the Children’s Bureau of the American Red Cross. It is the work of Miss Anna Milo Upjohn, a New York portrait painter, with the American Red Cross in Europe."
Upjohn's career reached another turning point in 1921 when she joined the JRC as a staff artist.The was then 53. Her professional career had begun thirty years earlier and would continue another two decades. Her new position gave her financial stability and welcome opportunities to travel. It did not prevent her from continuing to make and exhibit her paintings and drawings. In 1921, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. mounted a solo exhibition of drawings she had made in Europe while on assignment for the JRC.Reproductions of the drawings had previously been printed in issues of Junior Red Cross News and, in announcing the exhibition, the journal's editor had restated the organization's objective as giving American children "an intelligent, sympathetic understanding" of the children in war-torn European countries.The show generated considerable publicity in Washington with one critic saying Upjohn had "presented not only the pathetic, but the humorous, and has in many instances given her sketches the homely touch which makes for universal appeal." Subsequently put on tour across the country, the drawings continued to draw critical notice, including a comment that the drawings showed a "homely touch" making for "universal appeal".Early in 1923, Upjohn visited the American West for the JRC to sketch Indian children and later that year the organization sent her on a tour around the world from west to east.[36] After her arrival in Honolulu, a reporter described her child studies as "authoritative" and effective in achieving the JRC's goals of sympathy and understanding.On her return to the United States, the Maryland Institute in Baltimore exhibited a large number of her drawings from East- and Southeast Asia as well as Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe, the collection showing, as one critic said, "not pictures of children suffering, but happy childhood under varying conditions of life".[38]
In 1935, the Cronyn & Lowndes Gallery in Manhattan gave Upjohn an exhibition of her paintings, including both formal portraits and informal child studies. Writing in the New York Times, the critic, Howard Devree, saw "competent, honest work rather on the conventional side". Another critic noted the significance of the formal portraits but said the child studies were the most interesting element in the show.
Upjohn resigned her position at the Junior Red Cross in 1931, but she continued to make drawings for its publications.During the 1930s, the ARC continued to tour exhibitions of her paintings, watercolors, and drawings to public libraries and other exhibition spaces throughout the United States.In Mansfield, Ohio, the local newspaper headlined Upjohn as a "Famous Artist" whose work appeared in ARC posters, JRC literature, and other media.
Exhibitions of Upjohn's paintings and drawings were less frequent from 1940 onward and the last may have been the one held in the public library of Somerset, Pennsylvania, in June 1945.
Artistic style
Upjohn trained as both artist and illustrator. She attracted most critical notice for her portraits and other paintings and invariably put "artist" when asked to give her occupation. She painted in oil on canvas; made gouache, watercolor, and wash drawings; and often worked in charcoal or crayon.[48] She was best known for her formal portraits and informal depictions of children. She also made paintings of religious subjects and some landscapes.
Critics discussed the quality of her portraits without commenting on style. One called an early portrait "uncompromising".[11] Another rated her portrait of John van Benschoten one of the "strongest" in the exhibition where it appeared. (The sitter was probably a brother of Upjohn's close friend, Augusta K. van Benschoten.) Her portrait of a woman named Elizabeth Spencer was said to be "well posed and fluent". Two of her portraits, one showing Andrew Dickson White and the other Louis Agassiz Fuertes were claimed to be "two of the best in the possession of Cornell University".
Her informal portraits of children and other works drew relatively few comments on style. On an exhibition of drawings held in Boston in 1921, a critic said, "The drawings were made, sometimes with charcoal, sometimes with colored crayon.[51] The best, as so often happens, are those produced with most evident haste and spontaneity. Here and there one notes a little of that elaboration that takes the crisp edge off. In general, however, the childish forms are drawn with a taut, nervous line and with brisk indication of planes and attachments." In 1935, Howard Devree of the New York Times commented on the pastel effects she achieved, "despite use of a palette knife, through harmonizing of colors".] Another critic noted that Upjohn's informal portraits were usually done outdoors and almost never in her studio.
- Creator:Anna Milo Upjohn (1868 - 1951, American)
- Creation Year:1910 circa
- Dimensions:Height: 21.5 in (54.61 cm)Width: 27.5 in (69.85 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:Toning throughout - Spots of soiling - Unframed.Some very small losses to on the extreme edges.
- Gallery Location:Miami, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU385312458782
About the Seller
4.9
Platinum Seller
These expertly vetted sellers are 1stDibs' most experienced sellers and are rated highest by our customers.
Established in 2005
1stDibs seller since 2016
102 sales on 1stDibs
Typical response time: 1 hour
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Miami, FL
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 3 days of delivery.
More From This SellerView All
- Figure in a Wide-brimmed Red HatBy René GruauLocated in Miami, FLElegant and graphic study of a figure of undetermined gender. It's executed with quick and confident brush strokes in the artist's signature color scheme of black and red. It's a fla...Category
1960s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
MaterialsMixed Media, Pastel, Gouache, Board
- Blond Pin up with Perfect Smile Tennis Racket - Women IllustratorsLocated in Miami, FLJulia (Elsie Julia Miller) Schleicher (Canadian/American, 1916-1988) Woman Tennis Player Pastel and gouache on board 18 x 13-5/8 inches (45.7 x 34.6 cm) S...Category
1940s Romantic Portrait Paintings
MaterialsPastel, Gouache
- Glamorous Performer in Art Deco Black Evening Dress, Golden Age of HollywoodBy Jaro FabryLocated in Miami, FLwork is matted but not framed. Golden Age of Hollywood no illustrator chronicled the great stars, pin-ups and good girls better than Jaro Fabr...Category
1930s Art Deco Figurative Paintings
MaterialsWatercolor, Crayon, Gouache
- Art Journalism - War Lessons, Illustration for Collier's, Female IllustratorBy Martha SawyersLocated in Miami, FLMarta Sawyers. Illustrator Journalist. She was sent to war-ravaged countries to “Paint the Story”. What's unique here? This represents the work an Artist Journalist/War Correspondent...Category
1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings
MaterialsPastel
- Golden Age of Illustration Beautiful Smiling Woman, Female IllustratorBy Zoë MozertLocated in Miami, FLStunning portrait with a killer smile by Golden Age of Illustration female Illustrator Zoë Mozert. Signed lower right. Framed under glass, silk matted and i...Category
1930s Portrait Paintings
MaterialsPastel, Illustration Board
- Handsome Tropical Exotic Male Dancer Square Jaw - Gay InterestLocated in Miami, FLA dark and exotic looking male dancer with chiseled features wears a blue hat made of flowers and feathers is depicted in vibrant colors that evokes festiv...Category
1940s Portrait Paintings
MaterialsPastel, Paper
You May Also Like
- Katya (Lying Down), Mixed media on Pergamenata parchmentBy Howard TangyeLocated in London, GBHoward Tangye (b.1948, Australia) has been an influential force in fashion for decades. Lecturing at London’s Central Saint Martins for 35 years, including 16 years as head of BA Wom...Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings
MaterialsPaint, Paper, Parchment Paper, Chalk, Charcoal, Crayon, Oil Crayon, Oil ...
- Tom & Richard (Stripes, through Zoom), Mixed media on ochre parchmentBy Howard TangyeLocated in London, GBHoward Tangye (b.1948, Australia) has been an influential force in fashion for decades. Lecturing at London’s Central Saint Martins for 35 years, including 16 years as head of BA Wom...Category
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
MaterialsPaint, Paper, Parchment Paper, Charcoal, Crayon, Oil Crayon, Oil Pastel,...
- Andrew (Lying Down, Hand Behind Head), Mixed media on Pergamenata parchmentBy Howard TangyeLocated in London, GBHoward Tangye (b.1948, Australia) has been an influential force in fashion for decades. Lecturing at London’s Central Saint Martins for 35 years, includi...Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings
MaterialsPaste, Gesso, Paint, Paper, Parchment Paper, Charcoal, Crayon, Oil Crayo...
- Oscar (Lying Back, Hand Behind Head, 3/4 Figure), Mixed media on ochre parchmentBy Howard TangyeLocated in London, GBHoward Tangye (b.1948, Australia) has been an influential force in fashion for decades. Lecturing at London’s Central Saint Martins for 35 years, including 16 years as head of BA Wom...Category
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
MaterialsPaint, Paper, Parchment Paper, Charcoal, Crayon, Oil Crayon, Oil Pastel,...
- Eton Boy (Sitting), Mixed media on Pergamenata parchmentBy Howard TangyeLocated in London, GBHoward Tangye (b.1948, Australia) has been an influential force in fashion for decades. Lecturing at London’s Central Saint Martins for 35 years, including 16 years as head of BA Wom...Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings
MaterialsPaint, Paper, Parchment Paper, Charcoal, Crayon, Oil Crayon, Oil Pastel,...
- Magnus (Sitting, Up and Down), Mixed media on Pergamenata parchmentBy Howard TangyeLocated in London, GBHoward Tangye (b.1948, Australia) has been an influential force in fashion for decades. Lecturing at London’s Central Saint Martins for 35 years, including 16 years as head of BA Wom...Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings
MaterialsPaint, Paper, Parchment Paper, Chalk, Charcoal, Crayon, Oil Crayon, Oil ...
Recently Viewed
View AllMore Ways To Browse
Antique Toy Plane
Antique Toy Planes
Comme Des Garcon Book
Antique Toys New York
Charcoal Of Young Lady
Fond Du Lac
Comme Des Garcons Red
Antique Knife Rests Silver
Antique Toy Indian
Antique Indian Knife
Asian Dolls Antique
Antique Silver Religious Medals
T L Atkinson
Taylor Bystrom
The Bashful Stripper
The Beetles Garden Yves Calmejane
Thomas Kent Pelham
Tilo Baumgartel