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Many English china companies have sought out female artists for children’s stories to decorate Nursery Ware china and other products. The background for series by Mabel Lucie Attwell for Shelley and Barbara Vernon for Royal Doulton are discussed in other articles. However, there are several other women whose contributions are of much interest to china collectors. Of course, their other works are also highly collectable. Some prominent artists are discussed here.
Anne Anderson
Anne Anderson was born in Scotland in 1874 but spent her childhood in Argentina. She married a painter Alan Wright in 1912 and they settled in Berkshire, England. Wright stopped receiving commissions after he illustrated a book in 1898 that was heavily criticized. He turned to collaborate with his wife to draw animals and birds while she did the rest so that she became their principal source of income but with his constant help. She illustrated over one hundred books and also did etchings, watercolors and greeting cards. She contributed to Blackie’s Children’s Annual, Cassell’s Children’s Annual, Mrs. Strang’s Annuals, Playbox Annual and Wonder Annual. Several of her designs were adapted for Nursery Ware china, particularly for Royal Doulton. Her style was typical Art Nouveau and her illustrations showed well dressed children with charming faces. She died in the late 1930s or early 1940s.
An Anne Anderson illustration and Royal Doulton design
Enid Blyton
Enid Mary Blyton was born in 1897 in London and was educated at St. Christopher's School in Beckenham. She married Major Hugh Pollock, editor of the book department in her publishing firm in 1924 and they had two daughters, but the marriage failed and they divorced. She married a surgeon, Kenneth Waters, in 1943. Her first book was a collection of poems published in 1922 and this was followed by some 800 books. Her books sold over 400 million copies translated into nearly 90 languages making her the most popular children’s author of all time and the sixth most popular author, just behind Shakespeare. At her peak, it is believed that she wrote up to 10,000 words a day. She wrote articles for magazines such as Sunny Stories which was extremely popular with younger children, and stories, novels and non-fiction works for older children. She also wrote on nature and Biblical themes. The text was usually simple so that illustrators were an important component for their appeal and her books were illustrated by many artists, some well known but others virtually anonymous. Illustrations were used by the Paragon China Company for Nursery Ware, and Noddy and Big Ears featured with several other china companies in the 1950s. Her children's books addressed issues of class, gender and race. Her main character Sambo in The Little Black Doll wanted to be washed white by the rain and her book The Three Golliwogs featured Golly, Woggie and Nigger. In time, publishers began to demand that she change her characters to suit the modern multicultural society. It is said that many libraries banned her works for political incorrectness, racism and sexism. In time, some contentious books were rewritten; for example, the Golliwogs names changed to Wiggie, Waggie and Wollie. This response from publishers has itself drawn criticism from some who view it as tampering with an important part of the history of children's literature. Her last volumes were published in 1963 and she developed Alzheimer's disease and died aged 71 in 1968.
Enid Blighton
Kate Greenaway
Catherine Greenaway was born in 1846 in North London and her family immediately called her Kate. Her father John Greenaway was an engraver and he became a strong influence and guiding force throughout her career. Her mother Elizabeth was a seamstress and helped to support their large family through a dress shop making children’s clothing and eventually lady’s clothing. As a child, Kate enjoyed watching well dressed people in the shop, and many outfits made by her mother later appeared in her books. Her childhood summers were spent with relatives in a village in Nottingham, and the country and its people also later featured in her illustrations. She drew dreamy young girls in frilly outfits in the English countryside. Kate had little early formal schooling but at age twelve she was enrolled at the Finsbury School of Art where she attended until age eighteen when she moved to the Central School in South Kensington, and she later attended the Slade School and Heatherley’s School of Art. Her father’s professional connections helped her to get commissions and she produced her first printed piece for a book in 1867. She started doing greeting cards and one sold over 25,000 copies in just a few weeks. She joined an engraver to produce her first full book Under the Window in 1879 and this sold more than 90,000 copies over two printings. Her illustrations were used for Nursery Ware china by the firms Collingwood Brothers, Wedgwood and Royal Doulton. Her books had become very popular in Britain and America and imitation items started to proliferate so that she was forced to be most careful of copyright. Her earnings allowed the family to move to a better home where she worked each morning in her studio. She became a friend and rival of Randolph Caldecott. She developed a long correspondence and friendship with the art critic John Ruskin but he proved to be a bad influence on her career. Her hopes of marriage to Ruskin never eventuated and he lowered her self-esteem and questioned her judgment leaving her depressed. Her father died in 1890 and her mother four years later. Kate’s career suffered and financial difficulties forced her to take on work housekeeping. She developed cancer and died in 1901. In 1955, the Library Association of Great Britain established the Kate Greenaway Medal awarded annually to the artist living and publishing in Britain who had produced the most distinguished children’s book illustrations for that year and this is now perhaps the most coveted award for any illustrator in the field.
Kate Greenaway
Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
Ida Sherbourne Rentoul was born in Australia in 1888. Her father was a Professor at the University of Melbourne. The Rentouls were a well-educated family, interested in all forms of literature, art and music. It has been said that Ida was able to draw birds and copy images on her nursery walls before the age of two. For fear of spoiling her distinctive style, her parents decided against sending her to drawing lessons.
She attended Presbyterian Ladies’ College. The New Idea published her first professional illustration in 1903 when she was just 15 years old. It accompanied a story called ‘The Fairies of Fern Gully’ by the author “Billabong” who in fact was her younger sister Annie Rentoul. Their collaboration soon led to a series of stories and illustrations by the Rentoul sisters and their first book was published in 1904. Ida’s illustrations were refreshing because her fairies frolicked amongst Australian animals such as kangaroos, koalas, and kookaburras in their native bushland. The Women’s Exhibition to celebrate achievements of Australian women was held in Melbourne in 1907. Ida and Annie collaborated with Georgette Peterson to present their first songbook, Australian Songs for Young and Old, and this was followed by two more that became Australian classics. In the same year, she began designing programs and costumes for pantomimes and ballets at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne. Ida then collaborated with Tarella Quinn to publish Gum Tree Brownie and other Faerie Folk of the Never Never in 1907 and they wrote several more together over the next 25 years. Ida married Grenbry Outhwaite in 1909 to become Ida Rentoul Outhwaite. He was a successful businessman and much of her success can be attributed to Grenbry’s business sense as he sought out publishers and promotional opportunities, for it was still customary to shield women from business matters. He commissioned a studio to be built in their large house and garden for Ida to work. Her output lessened as she had four children, Robert, Anne, Wendy and William. Her book, The Enchanted Forest published in 1921 was dedicated to the children. During the First World War Ida and Annie published an ambitious work in colour with the proceedings of sales donated to the Red Cross and with a copy presented to Queen Mary. After the war, the family was finally able to travel to London where she exhibited at the Fine Art Society in 1920. The firm A & C Black published five of her books between 1921 and 1934. A second exhibition of her work was held after they returned to Australia in 1921. She illustrated a comic strip for a children’s page of the Weekly Times from 1933 to 1939. However, her popularity and output began to decline due to a perceived lack of variety and change in her work and the Great Depression made it difficult to sell her expensive books. Grenbry died in 1938 and she lost both sons in the Second World War. After her daughters left home, she moved in with her sister Annie and she died in 1960. Annie died in 1978.
Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
Gladys Peto
Gladys Emma Peto was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire in 1890. She studied at the local school of art and then in London. She established herself with illustrations for novels by Louisa M Alcott and a satirical diary in The Sketch. She married Cuthbert Emmerson of the Royal Army Medical Corps and traveled with him to Malta, Cyprus and Egypt during the 1920s. Among the most interesting of her works were guide books for the region for the magazine Sojourners. She returned to work in London based in Chelsea and became well known throughout the United Kingdom in the late 1920s and 1930s as a fashion designer, illustrator and writer of children's books. Her attractive inventive art deco style was influenced by Aubrey Beardsley. Her work was invariably signed Gladys Peto or GEP. It was very fashionable for the ladies to wear a Peto dress. She did advertising illustrations for Ovaltine and many other products. Her illustrations were used as patterns for Nursery Ware china by RH and SL Plant (Tuscan China) in the early 1930s. Gladys Peto retired from commercial art in 1946 and moved to County Derry in Northern Ireland with her husband who had also retired from the army. She devoted her remaining years to painting landscapes in watercolors and to drawing and cultivating flowers. She suffered a stroke in 1970 that paralyzed her dominant right hand but she continued to paint and write with her left hand. She died in Northern Ireland in 1977.
A Gladys Peto illustration
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866. Her father was a barrister of independent means who had no need to practice. Her mother was also named Helen so that the daughter dropped her first name to avoid confusion. She was brought up by governesses and had little contact with her parents and no company until her brother Bertram was born six years after her. She coped with being alone by drawing and painting. During the summer, the family would holiday in the Lake District of England or in Scotland allowing the children the freedom to explore the countryside. Beatrix Potter never received a formal education but she did take private art classes. She spent hours sketching at the Kensington Museum, later to become the Victoria and Albert, and at the British Museum of Natural History. She developed her own style from studies of plants and animals drawing mice, rabbits, kittens and hedgehogs. She was also well versed in the sciences and became an expert in the study of fungi. In 1890, she successfully sold greeting cards to a firm in Germany and gained her first commission from the same firm to illustrate a book of children’s verses in 1893. She wrote a letter to a sick friend with a story of four rabbits, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter and later made this into a book that she called Peter Rabbit. The firm Frederick Warne & Co. published a revised edition with colour illustrations in 1902. Finally she was financially independent though still living with her parents at the age of 36. Over the next ten years, she illustrated twenty more books. She married Norman Warne, the son of her publishers, in 1905 but he died within a month of the wedding. She had secretly purchased a country property in the Lake District called Hill Top Farm and visited when she could to work on her books which included the farm and surrounding landscape. She married a local solicitor William Heelis in 1913 when she was 46, in spite of family opposition. A few more books were assembled from past drawings and published in America with the proviso that they never be published in England during her lifetime. She kept rabbits on her farm and told the little children that they were descendants of the real Peter Rabbit. Most of her time was now spent managing her farm and she acquired further properties. She died in 1943 at her country home at the age of 77. She willed Hill Top Farm and over 4,000 acres of land to the National Trust and many of her original drawings are still preserved there.
Beatrix Potter
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