Print by Bessie Pease Gutmann for Your Dollhouse

       Bessie Pease Gutmann (April 8, 1876 – September 1929, 1960) was an American artist and illustrator most noted for her paintings of putti, infants and young children. During the early 1900s Gutmann was considered one of the better-known magazine and book illustrators in the United States. Her artwork was featured on 22 magazine covers such as Woman's Home Companion and McCall's between 1906 and 1920. She also illustrated popular children's books including a notable 1907 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Although the commercial popularity of Gutmann's art declined during World War II, there was renewed interest in her illustrations from collectors by the late 20th century.

      Gutmann was born Bessie Collins Pease on April 8, 1876 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Horace Collins. After graduating from high school, she studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. From 1896 to 1898, she attended the New York School of Art (later Parsons, The New School). She also attended Art Students League of New York from 1899 to 1901.

      Bessie initially worked as an independent commercial artist drawing portraits and newspapers advertisements. In 1903, she gained employment with the publishing firm of Gutmann & Gutmann which specialized in fine art prints. Her first illustration of a children's book, published in 1905, was A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. Gutmann illustrated several more books including a notable 1907 version of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She also created artwork for postcards and calendars, and her art adorned 22 magazine covers for McCall's, Collier's, Woman's Home Companion, and Pictorial Review, among others. Her greatest recognition came from a series of hand-colored prints which highlighted the innocence of young children. Two of her most notable works were A Little Bit of Heaven and The Awakening which both focused on the face and hands of an infant tucked under a blanket. Gutmann's work was popular through the 1920s, but by World War II, interest in her style had declined. Due to failing eyesight, she retired from drawing in 1947.

      In 1906, Bessie married Hellmuth Gutmann, one of the brothers who co-owned the publishing firm where she was employed. The couple had three children, Alice, Lucille, and John, who became the models for Gutmann's illustrations.

      She died on September 29, 1960 in Centerport, New York at the age of 84.

      I've restored the few examples of her work, for this article, that I have in my collection. Not all of Gutmann's works are in the public domain. But certainly those illustrations published by companies other than her own prior to 1923 would be.

A few samples of Bessie Gutmann's paintings of children. Left, child on the telephone, Center, child in
a red highchair and Right, a child falling asleep under the bed covers.

Print by Maud Humphrey for Your Dollhouse

A restored photograph of 
Maud Hemphrey in her
youth.

      Maud Humphrey (March 30, 1868 – 1940) was a commercial illustrator, water colorist, and suffragette from the United States. She was also the mother of actor Humphrey Bogart and would frequently use her young son as a model.
      She was born in Rochester, New York in 1868 to John Perkins Humphrey and Frances V. Dewey Churchill. She studied at the Art Students League of New York and in Paris at the Julian Academy.
       She married Dr. Belmont DeForest Bogart (1867–1934); they had one son, Humphrey, and two daughters.
      She won a Louis Prang and Company competition for Christmas card design and then began working for publisher F. A. Stokes as an illustrator. From the 1890s through the 1920s, her work Included child portraits, "illustrating calendars, greeting cards, postcards, fashion magazines, and more than 20 story books." She earned more than $50,000 a year while her husband's surgical practice brought in $20,000 a year.
      E. Richards McKinstry of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library observed in his article Heres's Looking at You, Maud, that the Gerber Products logo she illustrated for its strained baby food was not created until Humphrey Bogart was an adult. So, they do not believe that he was depicted in this particular portrait.
      Maud Humphrey died in 1940 and was interred in the Columbarium at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale).

I've restored these illustrations by Maud Humphrey for those of you
who would like to decorate an old-fashioned doll house with them.
Do you think any of these babies or children are of her son
Humphrey Bogart?

Print by Grace Drayton for Your Dollhouse

Cover of "Molly and The Unwiseman
Abroad" 

          Grace Drayton (October 14, 1877 – January 31, 1936) was an illustrator who created popular period comics Dolly Dimples (1910) and The Pussycat Princess (1935). She created the "Campbell Soup Kids" advertising campaign and is probably best known for her popular Dolly Dingle paper dolls in the women's magazine Pictorial Review. She frequently collaborated with her sister, Margaret G. Hays, also a comic strip author and writer.
       Christened Viola Grace Gebbie, in 1900 she married Theodore Wiederseim and started signing her work "Grace Wiederseim." In 1911, Grace divorced Wiederseim and married W. Drayton, and started signing her work Grace Drayton. She divorced Drayton in 1923 but continued to sign her work "Grace Drayton" or "G G Drayton."
       She was an early member of Philadelphia's The Plastic Club.
       Some of Draytons' work is in the public domain and some of it is not. Be careful to scrutinize the publishing dates when looking at her work.

Read more about Grace Drayton:

• I've created some coloring pages of Grace Drayton's Children at the Crayon Palace for little ones.
• Grace illustrated "Molly and The Unwiseman Abroad"
• Ask the Archivist: Grace G. Drayton
• PDF from The Historical Society of Pennsylvania "The Plastic Club Records: 1888-2007"

illustrations by Grace Drayton

Prints by Pyle for Your Dollhouse

      Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.

      In 1894 he began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University). After 1900, he founded his own school of art and illustration, named the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. The scholar Henry C. Pitz later used the term Brandywine School for the illustration artists and Wyeth family artists of the Brandywine region, several of whom had studied with Pyle. Some of his more notable students were N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, Ethel Franklin Betts, Anna Whelan Betts, Harvey Dunn, Clyde O. DeLand, Philip R. Goodwin, Thornton Oakley, Violet Oakley, Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle, Olive Rush, Allen Tupper True, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Arthur E. Becher, William James Aylward, and Jessie Willcox Smith. Pyle's home and studio in Wilmington, where he taught his students, is still standing and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

      His 1883 classic publication The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood remains in print, and his other books, frequently with medieval European settings, include a four-volume set on King Arthur. He is also well known for his illustrations of pirates, and is credited with creating what has become the modern stereotype of pirate dress. He published his first novel, Otto of the Silver Hand, in 1888. He also illustrated historical and adventure stories for periodicals such as Harper's Magazine and St. Nicholas Magazine. His novel Men of Iron was adapted as the movie The Black Shield of Falworth (1954).

      Pyle traveled to Florence, Italy in 1910 to study mural painting. He died there in 1911 of a sudden kidney infection (Bright's Disease). Read more . . . 

Below I've restored a few of Pyle's paintings. You can visit a collection of his illustrations restored for children to color at my Crayon Palace blog here.

Left, an illustration of Captain Keitt, Center, an Attack On a Galleon, and Right, an illustration from "The Price of Blood."

More Related Content:

• How to plan a pirate themed birthday party...
• Coloring pages for life at sea.

Prints by Rackham for Your Dollhouse

Illustrator Arthur Rackham.

      Rackham was born in Lewisham, then still part of Kent as one of 12 children. In 1884, at the age of 17, he was sent on an ocean voyage to Australia to improve his fragile health, accompanied by two aunts. At the age of 18, he worked as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office and began studying part-time at the Lambeth School of Art.

      In 1892, he left his job and started working for the Westminster Budget as a reporter and illustrator. His first book illustrations were published in 1893 in To the Other Side by Thomas Rhodes, but his first serious commission was in 1894 for The Dolly Dialogues, the collected sketches of Anthony Hope, who later went on to write The Prisoner of Zenda. Book illustrating then became Rackham's career for the rest of his life.

      By the turn of the century Rackham had developed a reputation for pen and ink fantasy illustration with richly illustrated gift books such as The Ingoldsby Legends (1898), Gulliver's Travels and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (both 1900). This was developed further through the austere years of the Boer War with regular contributions to children's periodicals such as Little Folks and Cassell's Magazine. In 1901 he moved to Wychcombe Studios near Haverstock Hill, and in 1903 married his neighbour Edyth Starkie. Edith suffered a miscarriage in 1904, but the couple had one daughter, Barbara, in 1908. Although acknowledged as an accomplished black-and-white book illustrator for some years, it was the publication of his full colour plates to Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle by Heinemann in 1905 that particularly brought him into public attention, his reputation being confirmed the following year with J.M.Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, published by Hodder & Stoughton. Income from the books was greatly augmented by annual exhibitions of the artwork at the Leicester Galleries. Rackham won a gold medal at the Milan International Exhibition in 1906 and another one at the Barcelona International Exposition in 1912. His works were included in numerous exhibitions, including one at the Louvre in Paris in 1914.

      From 1906 the family lived in Chalcot Gardens, near Haverstock Hill, until moving from London to Houghton, West Sussex in 1920. In 1929 the family settled into a newly built property in Limpsfield, Surrey. Arthur Rackham died in 1939 of cancer at his home. Read more . . .

I've restored samples from Arthur Rackham's illustrated volume of English Fairy Tales: left is "fee-fi-fo-fum," I smell the blood of an Englishman, Center is Mr. and Mrs. Vinegar at home, and right is "She went along, and went along..."

Click to download the largest available size, print and frame for your dollhouse.

Read and Color More Fairy Stories:

• Fairy Tales by The Brother's Grimm - The ongoing collection in progress here...
• My Fairy Tale Coloring Pages - for adults and children to color in...

Print by Ruth Mary Hallock for Your Dollhouse

      Ruth Mary Hallock (1876-1945) illustrated children’s books for half a century. One of her earliest works was, “Little Rhymes for Little Readers” published in 1903. Many of her popular illustrations were republished in 1950 editions of children’s storybooks after her death.

More Links to Ruth Mary Hallock’s Artworks:

• Illustrator Ruth Mary Hallock
• Early Illustrators of a Child’s Garden Verses
• “What they say in Rabbitville, 1935″ by Hallock

Print by Wladyslaw T. Benda for Your Dollhouse

      Władysław Teodor “W.T.” Benda (January 15, 1873, Poznań, Poland (Posen, German Empire) – November 30, 1948, Newark, New Jersey, United States) was a Polish-American painter, illustrator, and designer.

      The son of musician Jan Szymon Benda, and a nephew of the actress Helena Modrzejewska (known in the United States as Helena Modjeska), W.T. Benda studied art at the Krakow College of Technology and Art in his native Poland and at the School of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. He came to the United States at the very end of the 19th century, to visit his Aunt Helena, who then lived in California. He stayed, and moved to New York City in 1902, where he attended the Art Students League of New York and the William Merritt Chase School. While there, Benda studied under Robert Henri and Edward Penfield.

A Girl of The Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter, 
(Read Online if you’d like) Illustrations by
Wladyslaw T. Benda.  New York Doubleday,
Page & Company, 1909. Title Page.

      He joined the Society of Illustrators in 1907, the Architectural League in 1916, and became a naturalized American in 1911. He was also a member of the National Society of Mural Painters. He remained in NYC for the rest of his life. Benda married Romola Campfield, and they had two daughters, Eleanora and Baria, who were both artists.

      Starting in 1905, Benda was primarily a graphic artist. He illustrated books, short stories, advertising copy, and magazine covers for Collier’s, McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Theatre Magazine and many others. Many publishers regarded Benda as their go-to artist for his dependability and artistic abilities. In his time he was as well known as Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth or Maxfield Parrish. During the 1920s/1930s every publication sought the look of “the American Girl,” but Benda’s beautiful women were often exotic and mysterious, not homespun pretty like the girls of Harrison Fisher or Howard Chandler Christy. Benda was fiercely proud of his Polish heritage and became closely associated with the Polish-American cultural institution, The Kosciuszko Foundation (see below). During the two World Wars he designed many posters for both Poland and America. He was honored with the ‘Polonia Restituta’ decoration by the Polish government following World War I.

      Beginning in 1914, Benda was also an accomplished mask maker and costume designer. His sculpted, papier-mache face masks were used in plays and dances and often in his own paintings and illustrations. They were used in masques or miracle plays in New York City at venues like the New York Coffee House. Benda also created the masks for stage productions in New York and London for such writers as Eugene O’Neil and Noël Coward. He became so well-known as a mask maker that his name became synonymous for any life-like mask, whether it was of his design or not. Benda also created “grotesque” masks, which were more fantasy or caricature in nature. Benda created the original mask design for the movie The Mask of Fu Manchu, which was originally published as a twelve part serial in Collier’s from May 7, 1932 through July 23, 1932. The cover of the May 7 issue presented a stunning portrait by Benda. In the latter stages of his career, Benda spent less time doing illustration and more time making masks.

       Articles by and about Benda and his masks appeared regularly in many of the same magazines and publications that carried his illustrations. In the 1930s he authored the Encyclopædia Britannica entry on masks. He also wrote a book, Masks (Watson-Guptill, 1944, currently out of print), a study of his own designs and unique construction techniques. The Polish Museum of America possesses a collection of Benda’s posters for the relief effort in Poland.

Prints sized down for dollhouse decorating.

More Links to Artworks and Illustrations by Wladyslaw T. Benda:

• The Indian Drum illustrated by Benda
• Magazine and Book Covers by Benda
• Video of his works at YouTube
• American Beauties from Library of Congress Exhibition
• Photos of Benda

“‘Edith, what did you say to Miss Comstock
 that made her run away from Phil?’”

“Elenora knelt and slipping her fingers through the leaves 
and grasses to the roots, gathered a few violets and gave them to Philip”

“‘If you had known about wonders like these in the days of your youth, 
Robert Comstock, could you ever have done the thing you did?’”

“With her lips near Elnora’s ear Polly whispered, ‘Sister! dear sister!’”

Print by Vera Stone Norman for Your Dollhouse

        Vera Stone Norman was born in Garden City in 1888. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1921. She is best known for the children’s illustrations she produced for magazine and books during the late 1920s and 30s. The majority of those books being Elementary text-books.

Above, Illustration of “brownies” (fairies) by Vera Stone Norman

Illustration of Deep Sea Divers by Vera Stone Norman.

Links to more Vera Stone Norman artworks:

• Illustrations by Vera Stone (Norman)

"Over The River and Through The Woods..."

        Here are three very lovely old prints by Currior & Ives for your dollhouse walls this coming holiday season. These depict: sleigh rides, horse drawn sleds, winter landscapes, farms in winter, domestic buildings, barns for farm animals, trees without foliage, ice on roads, farm equipment, maple syrup in large canisters, ladies with muffs, gentlemen with warm coats and gloves, ice skaters on ponds  and cloudy winter skies. In the old days, there was often freshly fallen snow on the ground several feet deep where I grew up in rural Missouri in time for Thanksgiving. Now, this is seldom true...

Three romanticized winter landscapes for your dollhouse!

"Over The River" for Thanksgiving! When
I was young, I sang this song all the time
because my grandmother did live over 
several creeks and through the woods...

Currier & Ives Prints for The Dollhouse

"The Pioneer's Home. On The Western Frontier." Currier & Ives print for dollhouses. The
lithograph depicts fur trappers, a log cabin, a covered wagon, pet hunting dog, a forest 
glen, children with their mother, a log bridge, hay stacks fall color and barnyard animals.

        Currier and Ives lithographs depicted a variety of images of American life, including winter scenes; horse-racing images; portraits of people; and pictures of ships, sporting events, patriotic and historical events, including ferocious battles of the American Civil War, the building of cities and railroads, and Lincoln's assassination.

"Winter In The Country, The Old Grist Mill" print by Currier & Ives depicts: log buildings,
winter forest, frozen stream, snow, horse and sleigh, cloudy skies.

       The original lithographs shared similar characteristics in inking and paper, and adhered to folio sizes. Sizes of the images were standard (trade cards, very small folios, small folios, medium folios, large folios), and their measurement did not include the title or borders. These sizes are one of the guides for collectors today in determining if the print is an original or not. "Currier used a cotton based, medium to heavy weight paper depending on the folio size for his prints until the late 1860’s. 

 

"God Bless Our School." by Currier & Ives, print shows: globe, sculpture, painting with easel,
map, old text books, slates drafting tools etc...

       From about 1870, Currier & Ives used paper mixed with a small amount of wood pulp." In addition, Currier’s inking process resembled a mixture of elongated splotches and dashes of ink with a few spots, a characteristic that modern reproductions would not possess." In 1907 when the firm was liquidated most of the lithographic stones had the image removed and were sold by the pound with some stones final home as land fill in Central Park. Those few stones that managed to survive intact were of large folio Clipper Ships, small folio Dark Town Comics, a medium folio "Abraham Lincoln" and a small folio "Washington As A Mason".

Links To Currier & Ives Sites:

• Currier and Ives Tradecards
• Behind the Scenes: The Artists Who Worked for Currier and Ives
• Currier and Ives, Printmakers to the American People
• Currier and Ives print of Chicago Fire, 1871, here.

"High Water" In The Mississippi by Currier & Ives shows: people taking refuge on their roofs
during a flood, a steamboat, trees in the flood and crates and barrels floating.

Prints by Paul Poiret

       Paul Poiret (20 April 1879, Paris, France – 30 April 1944, Paris) was a leading French fashion designer, a master couturier during the first two decades of the 20th century. He was the founder of his namesake haute couture house. His contributions to his field have been likened to Picasso's legacy in 20th-century art.

       These three small prints were drawn in 1908 by Poiret and they would look lovely framed inside of any doll bedroom, fashion bazaar, or hotel.

Three ladies show off their gowns.

Two ladies admire a painting.

Two ladies prepare for the evening.