100 Years of Illustration

Elizabeth Shippen Green: An Appreciation

I think that the following illustrations represent Elizabeth Shippen Green's best work. She had mastered her technique of sparkling watercolor glazes over solid charcoal drawings and yet, in the last color image seen below, she began painting in opaque colors. Personally, I don't like the direction she took and show only one such example. There are also two ink drawings that appear very derivative of her teacher Howard Pyle's pen renderings. The full view images may be enlarged, the closeups cannot.

"He Gazed at Her His Face Smiling," an illustration for "Tiphaiine la Fée" for the April 1906 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine.

"She Was Lying Back Watching Him, in the Great Chair," another illustration for "Tiphaiine la Fée" for the April 1906 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine.

"She Heard Him Speak to Someone Below," probably an illustration for another chapter of "Tiphaiine la Fée" which appeared in a later issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine for August 1907.

She looks to be drawn from the same model. The face is exquisite and the rest of the illustration: pose, drapery, background and all, is masterfully done.

"Miguela, Kneeling Still, Put it to her Lips," an illustration for "The Spanish Jade" for the September 1906 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine.

Another exquisite model and a superb illustration.

"Jehane – The Constant Lover," an illustration for "The Navarrese" by James Branch Cabell for the September 1906 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine.

"Giséle," one of Green's most memorable illustrations. It appeared in the October 1908 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine. Compare the beauty and impact of this superb work with the image below.

"The Arbor," one of four paintings for "The Child in the Garden," featured in the December 1914 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine. I don't know what the editors could have been thinking when they ran with these. However, Green may have fallen under other influences. She married Huger Elliott, a Philadelphia architect, in 1911 when she was 40 years old. Elliott soon became director of the Rhode Island School of Design and this may have influenced her to begin painting in a traditional way. She had, after all, studied in her youth with a great American painter, Thomas Eakins. Mary Cassatt was also an early influence. We can only speculate. Green continued to paint in this way for years to come and the results were stiff and unengaging.

"The Spirit of Life in All Things was Luminous." An illustration for "The Mansion" in the December 1910 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine.

Illustration for "The White People" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a lead story in the December 1916 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine. Though the illustration and even the lettering reminds us of Howard Pyle, the drawing is dull and uninteresting. A pity she didn't stay with what she knew best how to do.

Elizabeth Shippen Green - 2

This appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine for August 1902 and is a good example of Green's charcoal technique coupled with her appreciation of the art and decorations she became fond of during her six years of study and travel in Europe during the last decade of the XIXth Century. Richard Le Gallienne was famous as an English poet who travelled in avant-garde circles with other luminaries such as Oscar Wilde and the great caricaturist Max Beerbohm.

Click on the following images to enlarge.

It's a pity that reproduction was so poor in the magazine. Fortunately, we now have access to computer programs that allow us to digitally clean up and enhance images that are dark and smudgy. It must have quite a coup for Green to be assigned the illustrations for Le Gallienne's Perdita stories that appeared in several issues of Harper's for that year.

Charcoal on board printed with a tint block for an earlier Perdita story from Harper's Monthly Magazine for March 1902. This was probably drawn with the help of photos as reference.

We know from documents in the Library of Congress that Green was one of the early users of photos to help her with the poses of characters in her illustrations. This, from Harper's Monthly Magazine for June 1905 was done with the aid of a photo, entitled "Girl Kneeling," a gelatin silver print in the collection of Ben and Jane Eisenstat. The link is courtesy of the Swann Gallery and the Library of Congress exhibition of Green's work entitled A Petal from the Rose.

Here are two more which look to have been done with the aid of photos from Harper's Monthly Magazine for October 1905.

These two, in color, are from Harper's Monthly Magazine for December 1904 and a story entitled, "The Thousand Quilt." Watercolor over charcoal appears to be the medium used.

Elizabeth Shippen Green - 1

I've probably got more illustrations by Elizabeth Shippen Green than of her teacher and mentor, Howard Pyle [see archives for December 2004 and January 2005], so please bear with me as these posts continue and I document some of her remarkable career with scans of her work that appeared in the magazines of 100 years ago, give or take a decade or two. She was as prolific as any of her contemporaries and she lived a long, full life. Click on the images to enlarge them.

This photograph is entitled Elizabeth Shippen Green in her studio at the Red Rose Inn, circa 1903, and is in the papers of Violet Oakley in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. Elizabeth was born into an old Philadelphia (PA) family and encouraged to pursue her interest in art by her father, who had been an illustrator-correspondent in the U.S. Civil War. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art from 1889 to 1893 under notables teachers such as Thomas Eakins and Thomas Anshutz. While studying with Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute in 1894, she met Jessie Willcox Smith and Violet Oakley. They became good friends and shared a house they called the Red Rose Inn at Villanova (PA) in 1901.

Green worked in charcoal, and after fixing it with a thin and workable varnish spray applied watercolor in glazes. The face of this little girl, which I have lightened in Adobe Photoshop, suffered from the poor quality of four-color process reproduction in the early years. This appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine for December 1903.

This illustration appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine a year later in December 1904 and was reproduced in sepia without additional color. The title is "In the Chair of Judgment." There is a credit to the engraver, A. Hayman, which leads me to speculate that Green may have insisted that a specialist be entrusted with reproducing her work after the prior muddy results.

This appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine as part of a spread in one of their 1905 issues and it seems to be a much cleaner reproduction.

These are still muddy and we can only imagine Green's frustration. One of the series is not shown because it has been printed so much out-of-register. The spread appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine for August 1905.

Below, the title page of a spread in Harper's Monthly Magazine for December 1905 was no improvement in quality of print production. I've taken the liberty of lightening up the scan in Adobe Photoshop.

Next: More Elizabeth Shippen Green.