This gallery features different media all exploring facets of childhood. Specialty made scaled down craftsman children’s furniture shows the attention to children’s needs for their own spaces. Glazed ceramic tile murals offer narratives of adventure and fantasy through whimsical and romanticized interpretations of fairytales. The Let’s Play series of original woodblocks by The Gearheart sisters offer a unique view of children through the lens of everyday play. Illustrations from the Golden Age of Illustration, featuring many of that era’s most important artists, give a glimpse into early twentieth century Americana in the way of original cover art for magazines and advertising. In this gallery visitors are invited to enjoy the rich stories told by art as created in the early twentieth century.
Companies like Craftsman Workshops and Roycroft advised that rooms be entirely decorated in the Arts and Crafts style, not only for aesthetic enjoyment, but also to enhance one’s well-being, this included rooms for the children of the family. The handcrafted furnishings and decorative objects chosen for a child’s bedroom should reflect the same values of the Arts and Crafts movement as the rest of the home: simplicity of design, honesty in construction, utility, and restrained decoration derived from nature. The newly displayed objects represent a sample of what has become relatively rare — furnishings made specifically for children, often scaled down versions of furniture made for adults.
Also new to this gallery are numerous new acquisitions from the artists of the Golden Age of Illustration. The later part of the nineteenth century saw the diversification of opportunities for artists allowing representational artists to pursue careers in commercial illustration. In 1894, Howard Pyle started the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia — the first school of illustration in the United States. This formal training of a new generation of illustrators professionalized illustration and allowed many women to enter the field as trained artists.
Improved color printing techniques that were quick and efficient allowed magazines to have brilliantly designed cover art as well as illustrations throughout the publications. Mass consumption of printed media via the ever-improving postal service and expanded railroad network made magazines and other periodicals popular with the general public as they could be delivered to your door. With the increased popularity of these publications, advertisers begin to produce vibrant ads geared towards the readers of these magazines, the majority of which were women. The need for cover art as well as advertising led to highly skilled artists seeking lucrative illustration commissions, instead of working in more traditional fine art areas. Much like the Arts and Crafts movement, the volume of work, as well as the often-times domestic subject matter, created an environment posed for female artists like, Sarah Stilwell Webber and Dorothy Hope Smith, to seek formal training and become some the era's most successful artists.
The artists of the Golden Age of Illustration are responsible for some of the most iconic imagery that shaped American life in the early twentieth century. Producing cover art for popular publications like Collier's, Ladies’ Home Journal, Liberty, Good Housekeeping and Saturday Evening Post, and iconic advertising images for Ivory Soap, Kellogg’s, Gerber, and more, these artists created memorable Americana that live on today.
See these and other works for the young and young at heart, in MAACM’s fifth-floor Children’s Gallery.