With Thoughtful Eyes

Jessie Willcox Smith is best known as an illustrator of children's books. A kindergarten teacher before beginning her art studies, she trained at several Philadelphia art schools including the Pennsylvania Academy. Subsequently, she worked with the influential illustrator Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute. His romantic imagination, rich coloring, and inventive sense of composition influenced Smith, who went on to develop a more delicate and fanciful manner of her own. It was in Pyle's class that she met Violet Oakley and Elizabeth Shippen Green, women who became lifelong friends and with whom Smith shared a home and studios for many years. Smith produced several suites of well-known illustrations for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verses" (1914) and Charles Kingsley's "Water Babies" (1916), both of which became classics of the genre. "With Thoughtful Eyes" is the sixth of seven illustrations for The Seven Ages of Childhood (1909) by Carolyn Wells, which shows the progression of the child from infancy to young motherhood. Smith's work usually appeared first as black and white images in popular magazines such as "Ladies' Home Journal" and "Good Housekeeping," and only later as full-color reproductions in children's books.