WOMAN IN ART
W. J. Loftie, who had them written up and published in the People's Magazine.
It was then that she began to realize the possibilities that lay in her grandmother's gowns. These she made up with her own hands and costumed her models and lay figures. It was largely due to the thoroughness in the beginning that she achieved ultimate success. In 1870 she exhibited for the first time in Suffolk Street. In 1871 she illustrated Madame d'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales for Messrs. Cronheim. In 1873 she began work on "little folks" and was employed by Marcus Ward to design Christmas Cards, which proved an immense success. The next year she exhibited and sold "A Fern Gatherer" at the Royal Manchester Institute. In 1877 she sold her first Academy picture, "Missing," and was working for the London Graphic and the Illustrated News.
Those were the days when woman was doing next to nothing in art, but Kate Greenaway kept steadily at her art for little people. Her work of greatest importance just then was the beginning of her long business connection with Mr. Edmund Evans, the well-known color printer. The turning point in her career was his publication of her book, "Under the Window"—both letterpress and illustrations were hers. Of this, more than seventy thousand copies were sold. This was followed by "A Birthday Book," "Mother Goose" (1881), "The Pied Piper Of Hamelin," "A Day In a Child's Life" (1887), and a dozen more.
An idea of the success of the Greenaway-Evans partnership may be gathered from the fact that in the space of ten years the number of copies of her printed works reached the grand total of 714,000.
In 1881 the Empress Frederick of Germany and the Princess Christina sought the acquaintance of the gifted artist, and received her at Buckingham Palace.
In 1883 Miss Greenaway had made enough money (four of her books alone having brought her eight thousand pounds) to build herself a fine house and studio at Frognal, Hampstead, which was her home until her death November 7, 1901.
In 1885 she did some extra illustrating for the old ballad, "Dame Wiggim of Lea," with an introduction by John Ruskin. In 1889 Miss Greenaway was elected a member of The Royal Institute of Painters in Water-colors, to which she frequently contributed genre subjects and portraits. In 1891.
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