Jessie Willcox Smith

Portrait of a Boy with a Toy Sailboat, Oil on Canvas, Signed, 1926

1926

But success as an illustrator wasn't immediate. She got a job in the production department of The Ladies Home Journal in 1889 and was still working there five years later when Howard Pyle began teaching illustration at Drexel Institute of Arts and Sciences. Smith was accepted as a pupil in his first class. At 31, she was only 10 years younger than her teacher and one of his oldest students. Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley soon joined her in the class, and the three became lifelong friends. Smith's first commission through Pyle was for an 1897 edition of Evangeline that she illustrated with Oakley. The two joined another Pyle student to rent a studio, and Green later joined them there. In 1901, the three shared the lease on an old inn outside of Philadelphia. That's the same year as the illustration above from "The Last of the Fairy Wands" in the December issue of Scribners Magazine. She produced two calendars with Green for 1902 that helped establish the careers of both women. The most important was "The Child," which showcased some of her most sensitive renditions of children to date. The images were collected into a book the following year. One of Smith's three images from that book is above at right. The magazines and books of the day voraciously consumed as much color work as possible. Pyle's students were some of the best-prepared new entrants into the illustration market, and Pyle's name gave them access to the magazines' pages.