"When Daddy Was a Little Boy"

Details

Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935)
"When Daddy Was a Little Boy"
signed 'Jessie Willcox Smith.' (lower left)
mixed media on paperboard
18 ½ x 16 7/8 in. (47 x 42.9 cm.)
Executed circa 1903.

Provenance

Private collection.
American Illustrators Gallery, New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Literature

B. Sage, Rhymes of Real Children, New York, 1903, facing p. 8, illustrated.
B. Sage, Rhymes of Real Children, London, 1905, facing p. 8, illustrated.
H. Clopath, "Jessie Willcox Smith," School Education, vol. 25, no. 6, June 1906, p. 7.
E.D. Nudelman, Jessie Willcox Smith: A Bibliography, Gretna, Louisiana, 1989, pp. 42, 124.
L.S. Cutler, J.G. Cutler, National Museum of American Illustration, Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists, Edison, New Jersey, 2004, p. 429, illustrated.

Exhibited

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1904.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Watercolor Club, 1904.

Lot Essay

The present work was published as an illustration for Betty Sage's Rhymes of Real Children, printed by Duffield & Co. in 1903.

"The illustrations in Rhymes of Real Children, painted in watercolor over charcoal, are among her most decorative, full of sensitivity and warmth." (E. Nudelman, Jessie Willcox Smith, American Illustrator, Gretna, Louisiana, 1990, p. 30) This painting brings to life the rhyme:
"When Daddy was a little boy,
All little boys were good,
And did just what their nurses,
And their parents said they should."

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