Illustrations by Cos Cob Artists

October 3, 2007 to January 6, 2008

Justus Luke & Sally Bush’s Bedroom

An enchanting selection of over 150 works, including illustrated books, original drawings and paintings; this is the first exhibition to bring together works by eight artist-illustrators who had an association with the Greenwich area and the Cos Cob art colony from 1890-1920: John Wolcott Adams, George Wharton Edwards, Childe Hassam, Rose Cecil O’Neill, Ernest Thompson Seton, E. Boyd Smith, Jean Webster and Genjiro Yeto. The exhibition is guest curated by Marilyn Symmes, Director of the Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Jersey .

American Impressionist John H. Twachtman settled in Greenwich in 1889 where he began teaching summer art classes at the Holley House, a boarding house in Cos Cob owned by Josephine and Edward Holley. Before long, a lively art colony developed around Twachtman. Known today as Bush-Holley House, the Holley House served as the artistic and intellectual hub for artists, journalists and authors who came to the area from New York and played a major role in the development of American Impressionist art. While this vibrant artist colony flourished, America was also enjoying a golden age of illustration. An unprecedented number of illustrated books and periodicals were produced. Advances in commercial printing and photography gave illustrators more options for replicating their images on the printed page.

The works of the authors and illustrators included in this exhibition cover a broad spectrum of topics from flights of fantasy, discovery of the real world and explorations into the past and present. They also provide insights into American society at the outset of the modern era.

Once Upon a Page features works from the William E. Finch Jr. Archives of The Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich as well as loans from Susan G. and James T. Larkin, Robert Russell, the Boston Public Library, the Brandywine River Museum, The Bruce Museum, the Florence Griswold Museum, The New York Public Library, the Wilton Historical Society and Heritage Museum and an anonymous private collector.

The exhibition and catalogue are generously underwritten by The Host Committee of the 75th Anniversary of The Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich and through additional underwriting gifts from Robert C. and Julie Graham, The Overbrook Foundation in honor of the 75th Anniversary and Charles M. and Deborah Royce.

The Artists

John Wolcott Adams (1874-1925) created illustrations depicting nostalgic glimpses of American colonial history and Civil War life. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston , and the Art Students League in New York and was heavily influenced by the art of Howard Pyle. Inspired by Pyle’s depictions of historic episodes, Adams increasingly specialized in American history subjects and the “golden olden days.” He was known for his mature linear style using short, tightly drawn, strokes to detail scenes.

George Wharton Edwards (1859-1950) was a prolific artist, illustrator and writer for seven decades, producing more than sixty illustrated books. In 1811, Edwards went to Paris to study with Eugène Feyen, a painter of seaside genre scenes. Edwards received his first major book illustration commission for The Last Leaf, a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes around 1884. By 1909, Edwards’s career was directed towards writing and illustrating gift travel books drawn from sketchbooks, drawings and paintings he did during frequent journeys abroad.

Childe Hassam (1859-1935) began his career as an illustrator in the early 1880s. From 1886 to 1889 he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris . In 1890 he moved to New York City where he painted city views and landscapes, and created illustrations for periodicals and books. Hassam’s visits every summer and fall to picturesque New England sites inspired some of his greatest works in oil, watercolor, pastel and printmaking. His artistic development was particularly invigorated by Appledore (one of the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire ) and Cos Cob.

Pocahantas

Rose Cecil O’Neill (1875-1944) was a gifted, prolific and popular book and magazine illustrator for almost three decades. She ranked among America ’s most successful illustrators, an unprecedented accomplishment for a women at that time. As staff artist for Puck , America ’s leading humor magazine, she produced more than 700 illustrations and an occasional poem. Later she created what she called “Monster Drawings” featuring fantastic hybrid figures with muscular torsos inspired by mythology and old master art. She also developed the Kewpie (baby talk for “cupid”) in December 1909 for Woman’s Home Companion, which ultimately led to the creation of the Kewpie doll.

Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) was a self-taught expert on North American wildlife and a prolific author-illustrator of animal stories. At 16 he was a student at the Ontario School of Art and went on to study in London . By December 1883 Seton was living in New York and studying at the Art Students League. He made hundreds of drawings of birds during visits to the American Museum of Natural History in New York which helped launch his career as a naturalist illustrator. He promoted knowledge of the wilderness and respect for Native American culture for more than sixty years.

E. Boyd Smith (1860-1943) created illustrations for more than seventy books, many of which became perennial favorites with children. He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1882 and although he spent much of the 1890s making drawings of rural peasant life in France , by 1899 Smith was sketching Native American and cowboy life in the American and Canadian West. After developing a specialization in Western illustrations, he shifted course, creating The Story of Noah’s Ark (1905), which established him as one of America ’s master illustrators for children.

Jean Webster (1876-1916) was mainly known as a fiction writer, however it was the two novels that she wrote and illustrated, Daddy-Long-Legs (1912) and Dear Enemy (1915), which brought her national fame and promoted her views on orphanage reform. Each is composed as a lively correspondence illustrated with captivating, deliberately childlike drawings. Daddy Long Legs was adapted into the popular Broadway play by the same name in 1914.

Happy Day

Genjiro Yeto (1867-1924) was born Genjiro Kataoka in Arita , Japan and came to the United States around 1890. He studied at New York ’s Art Students League with artists including Robert Blum, Kenyon Cox, John H. Twachtman and illustrator W. Appleton Clark. Yeto illustrated several Japanese-themed stories including Tora’s Happy Day (1899) by Florence Peltier Perry. Following his first solo exhibition at a New York gallery in 1901, he received a steady flow of commissions to illustrate Japanese-inspired fiction for American readers.