This lovely picture was sent to me by a friend who seems to be an inexhaustible source of reading pictures (thanks, Ruth!). It is by the celebrated American illustrator Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863-1935), whose work will undoubtedly be familiar to many of you. I certainly had books illustrated by her when I was a child, probably ones that had belonged to my mother.
She was amazingly prolific, but seems to have had a rather lonely life. Here's a slightly sad snippet from Wikipedia:
Most of Smith's work is primarily concerned with children and motherly love. Many reviewers say Smith was continually trying to recreate the image of love she had desperately needed as a child. Smith preferred to use real children as opposed to child actors, because she found professional children did not have the same soul, or will to explore, as amateur child models. She would invite her friends to visit, and watch their children play, to use that as her inspiration.
