Jessie Willcox Smith

"The Story Hour" Illustration for Harper's Bazar

1910

"'I choose this,' said Polly, holding up a long white kid glove, shrunken and yellow with time, but looking as if it had a history." Illustration for An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa...

Medium: Gouache and Mixed Media on Board Signature: Signed Lower Left Illustration from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic poetry volume, 'A Chil...

Date: 1912 Medium: Oil on Canvas Sight Size 18.50" x 12.50", Framed 27.50" x 21.50" Signature: Signed Lower Left July 1912 Woman's Home Companion Magazine Cover

Original cover for Good Housekeeping magazine, published March 1931

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...

Famed female illustrator, Jessie Willcox Smith paints the " Ideal Child" in a spiritual moment for the Christmas cover of Good Housekeeping. The acc...

Famed female illustrator Jessie Willcox Smith paints the " Ideal Child" in a spiritual moment for the Christmas cover of Good Housekeeping. The accompl...

A heartwarming scene in oil, showing a mother introducing a young child to a baby while a cherub looks on. The artist has signed to the lower right corner. This painting of considera...