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Kate Greenaway Unusually for a children's illustrator, she was widely acclaimed within the art world and numbered Paul Gauguin and John Ruskin amongst her most distinguished admirers. Her children's books began a fashion for the Regency period as the Pre-Raphaelites had for the Middle Ages and Alma-Tadeau for classical antiquity. A characteristic example of her work is The Garden Seat in which a little girl sits motionless like a beautiful doll, while a small boy poses self-consciously with a hoop, and their governess or elder sister sits besides them completely absorbed in the frivolous pursuit of reading a novel. Ruskin admired her illustrative works, but being Ruskin, strove repeatedly to encourage her to draw not from her imagination but from nature. He set her subjects such as wild flowers and shamrocks, studies of 'rocks, moss and ivy' found in walks near his home at Brantwood, and prepared ornithological specimens such as a kingfisher. He also begged her (without success) to make studies from the nude. She was a close friend of the artist Helen Allingham (Patterson) (1848-1926) and in 1890 they both painted a cottage about to be demolished in Pinner. Kate Greenaway added some children gathering cowslips in the foreground, while Helen Allingham, as usual, painted at the gate her familia sun-bonneted woman with a child in her arms. Frequently she illustrated her own books, the most famous being the distinguished series of Kate Greenaway's Almanacs. Greenaway's work was so well-known that the charming garb in which she clothed the characters she painted heavily influenced fashions of the day. Born in 1846, Greenaway's exquisite touch and unashamed romanticism have been much imitated, but never equalled. She died in 1901, acknowldeged as one of the greats of children's illustration. |
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