Drawn to Purpose

American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists

Martha H. Kennedy

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781496815934
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Winner of the 2019 Eisner Award for the Best Comics-Related Book Published in partnership with the Library of Congress, Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists presents an overarching survey of women in American illustration, from the late nineteenth into the twenty-first century. Martha H. Kennedy brings special attention to forms that have heretofore received scant notice—cover designs, editorial illustrations, and political cartoons—and reveals the contributions of acclaimed cartoonists and illustrators, along with many whose work has been overlooked. Featuring over 250 color illustrations, including eye-catching original art from the collections of the Library of Congress, Drawn to Purpose provides insight into the personal and professional experiences of eighty women who created these works. Included are artists Roz Chast, Lynda Barry, Lynn Johnston, and Jillian Tamaki. The artists' stories, shaped by their access to artistic training, the impact of marriage and children on careers, and experiences of gender bias in the marketplace, serve as vivid reminders of social change during a period in which the roles and interests of women broadened from the private to the public sphere. The vast, often neglected, body of artistic achievement by women remains an important part of our visual culture. The lives and work of the women responsible for it merit much further attention than they have received thus far. For readers who care about cartooning and illustration, Drawn to Purpose provides valuable insight into this rich heritage.

CHAPTER 1

GOLDEN AGE ILLUSTRATORS

When a woman married …, “that was the end of her.”

—HOWARD PYLE, renowned illustrator and instructor, on women aspiring to be illustrators, ca. 1890¹

I wrote him, in defiance of fate, everything I was doing and all that happened to show that my life in the East was not made up of waiting, that it was going forward by leaps and bound[s] in a direction which did not point to marriage.

—MARY HALLOCK FOOTE, illustrator, describing her correspondence with Arthur De Wint Foote, whom she married in 1876²

Howard Pyle and Mary Hallock Foote likely never crossed paths but they each put their charcoal- and ink-stained fingers on the quandary that challenged many talented women seeking careers in illustration. Pyle, perhaps the greatest illustration instructor of his time, taught at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and later his own school of illustration. Far from discouraging all women in his classes, Pyle believed that some were capable of producing illustration art equal to that created by their male peers. Further, he agreed that a woman had the right to pursue a career, but he also shared the widely held view that a woman could not sustain a marriage while also meeting the deadlines and high standard of work required of a professional illustrator.³

Given longstanding social pressure on most women to marry, it took exceptional determination on the part of even highly talented, motivated women to pursue careers in the visual arts. The expectation of marriage, along with biases against their gender in art training and employment, hampered many aspiring artists. Others deliberately chose not to marry. Foote did marry and numbered among those who fulfilled roles in two spheres, professional and domestic, forging successful careers and private lives as wives and mothers. Many a sister illustrator, however, found that she needed to sacrifice one role for the other.

Whether she married or not, an art education was critical to an illustrator’s professional development, as it helped expand opportunities for exhibition, commissions, and networking. In the 1890s, the Cooper Union, the New York School of Applied Design for Women, and the Philadelphia School of Design for Women offered courses intended for single women seeking vocational training.⁴ Many, however, sought more rigorous training in the fine arts, which the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) provided. For women, access to such a curriculum increased incrementally in the nineteenth century. During the 1840s, women could not study in the same classes as men at PAFA, although in 1844 the board of directors passed a resolution granting women “the exclusive use of the statue gallery for professional purposes … during the hours of 10 to 11:00 [am] on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”⁵ By 1856, with female enrollment increasing, women were allowed to study from casts in classes with men. They later gained unrestricted access to the sculpture gallery once the male statues had been covered with strategically placed fig leaves.⁶ As of 1860, women could also attend lectures on anatomy, but unlike their male peers, they were not allowed to draw from live, let alone nude, male models.⁷ Consequently, a number of women organized their own classes off campus, posing for one another clothed or sometimes half-draped. The academy later quietly added “Ladies’ Life Classes” to the curriculum, and for many years life courses continued to be segregated.⁸ In one notorious instance, Thomas Eakins, a professor of drawing at PAFA, was forced to resign in 1886 after he used a nude male model in a class with male and female students.⁹

For a number of aspiring illustrators, men and women, Pyle proved to be a crucial part of their art education. He taught a class at Drexel and went on to offer special summer classes at Chadds Ford, outside of Philadelphia, from 1898 to 1903 to select students, including such successful artists as Elizabeth Shippen Green, Jessie Willcox Smith, and Violet Oakley.¹⁰ The Society of Illustrators, founded in 1901 by a group of male practitioners, recognized that some women were as worthy as men for membership, and elected Green and Florence Scovel as associate members in 1903. The following year saw Oakley, Smith, and May Wilson Preston welcomed as associate members,¹¹ but it was not until the 1920s that the society allowed women full membership.¹²

THE GOLDEN AGE

Despite the obstacles, American women illustrators increased in number and visibility beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. As illustrated newspapers, literary magazines, popular periodicals and prints, and books played an increasingly important role in culture and society, skilled women artists contributed significantly to the narrative, documentary, comic, and satirical imagery that enlivened such widely disseminated publications. In addition to advancing storylines, these artists created images that demonstrated how female roles in society were changing. At the same time, subject matter considered acceptable for women artists—children, family, and fashion—was also gradually broadening. The growth of the middle class in post–Civil War America brought with it increased leisure time and social mobility, both factors that enlarged and enhanced women’s experiences beyond the purely domestic world of home and child-rearing. In time women earned commissions to illustrate popular adult literature, including romances in short story and novel formats, as well as literary classics.

The Golden Age of Illustration spans the years from about 1880 to 1930 and coincides with a period when publishing flourished and illustrated magazines and books streamed into the homes of middle- and upper-class Americans. The post–Civil War era gave rise to enormous growth in industry and transportation, expansion of the middle and upper classes, and, with the spread of public schools nationwide, greater educational opportunities and higher literacy rates. These trends, combined with a notable increase in leisure time, produced great demand for illustrated publications. Readers eagerly sought image-filled works that offered articles of general interest, humor, self-improvement, poetry, and fiction in short and long form, as sources of enlightenment and entertainment. During its popular peak, illustration was a distinctive art form tied primarily to storytelling, informative texts, and advertising. Among the many aspiring artists who pursued careers in the field, those who became celebrated in their time included women, but hardly any of them, male or female, attained fame that lasted. Howard Pyle, Charles Dana Gibson, N. C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish number among the few that are still remembered—all men.

GOLDEN AGE PREDECESSORS

The often hidden and little-known work created by women for America’s early print publishing houses set the stage for and possibly inspired the excellent work and broad recognition achieved by women illustrators who emerged during the Golden Age in the late nineteenth century. These establishments, initially concentrated in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, primarily produced commercial and documentary lithographs, such as depictions of Civil War battles and appealing scenes of domestic life. Many of these illustrations went uncredited. The Pendleton lithographic establishment in Boston employed a number of women to assist in the complex lithographic process, in which drawings are made on polished limestone treated so that image areas retain ink and non-image areas repel it, and are then transferred to paper.¹⁹ It is unlikely that female employees actually worked in the shop, however, because prevailing social norms did not encourage women’s employment.²⁰ In Philadelphia, print publishers were renowned for producing some of the finest hand-colored lithographic book illustrations, and skilled women executed most of the coloring.²¹ By the mid-nineteenth century, several women, trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art), were also working as lithographers.²²

While the contributions of these early lithographers and colorists generally remain obscure, one woman did win at least some name recognition. Trained by a professional artist, Frances Flora (“Fanny”) Bond Palmer (1812–1876) emigrated from England with her husband, Edmund Seymour Palmer, and in 1844 the couple established a lithography business in Manhattan. The business failed, but its acquisition in 1851 by Nathaniel Currier opened new opportunities for Palmer, who rapidly became one of the most prolific and skilled artists for the legendary Currier & Ives firm.²³ During the 1850s she produced several pastoral series, including American Farm Scenes (1853), American Country Life (1855), and American Winter Scenes (1854). She also created two prints that became icons of American visual culture: Across the Continent, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1868) and The Rocky Mountains, Emigrants Crossing the Plains (1866). This seems all the more remarkable considering that Palmer reportedly never traveled west of Hoboken, New Jersey, and lived in Brooklyn during the years she worked for Currier & Ives. Like other commercial artists, she probably used photographs and published drawings of actual sites to create her works, including such Civil War subjects as The Valley of the Shenandoah (1864) (fig. 1.1) and Cumberland Valley from Bridgeport Heights Opposite Harrisburg, PA (1868).²⁴

Fig. 1.1. Fanny Palmer. The Valley of the Shenandoah, 1864. Lithograph, hand colored. Published by Currier & Ives.

In addition to creating some two hundred lithographs she is known to have worked on many more that were issued anonymously. From 1862 to 1867 Palmer reportedly produced all but one of the still lifes published by the firm and is also believed to have made many of its anonymous fruit and flower prints.²⁵ Her employers’ commercial interests and ideological convictions most likely determined the choice of subjects she handled. Unfortunately, Palmer left no known papers revealing her own opinions on the breadth of subjects she was assigned or how she might have regarded the ways in which women were being depicted. Even so, she stands out as a commercial artist who employed a broadly appealing mix of factual observation, artistic convention, and knowledge of other artists’ published treatments of similar or related subjects. As Currier & Ives expert Ewell L. Newman observed, “It is likely that during the latter half of the nineteenth century more pictures by Mrs. Fanny Palmer decorated the homes of ordinary Americans than those of any other artist, dead or alive.”²⁶

Despite the broad appeal and cultural importance of illustration, its status as an art form remained unsettled during much of its Golden Age and after it waned.¹³ Even among illustrators themselves, opinions varied as to the significance and proper place of illustration in the art world. Could it be regarded as a type of fine art, or, because such artwork was usually created for commissions involving text, must it be considered essentially commercial? During the last third of the nineteenth century, such well-known figures as Winslow Homer, Edwin Austin Abbey, John La Farge, and Howard Pyle all tra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Golden Age Illustrators
• Chapter 2. Early Cartoonists: From Cute and Clever to Career Women
• Chapter 3. New Voices, New Narratives in Comics
• Interlude. Illustrations for Industry
• Chapter 4. Commentators and Reporters
• Chapter 5. Covers and Cartoons
• Chapter 6. Caricaturists and Political Cartoonists
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Biographical Sketches
• Selected Bibliography and Suggestions for Further Reading
• Image Credits
• Index