Jessie Willcox Smith (American, 1863-1935) Lucretia Signed 'Jessie Willcox Smith' bottom left, oil on canvas 50 x 40 1/4 in. (127 x 102.2cm) PROVENANCE: The Artist. A gift from the above. Dr. Joseph Fleitas, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. By descent in the family. Private Collection, New Jersey. EXHIBITED: "10th Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings," The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., March 1-August 1, 1926. "Memorial Exhibition of the Work of Jessie Willcox Smith," Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 14-April 12, 1936, no. 180. "Jessie Willcox Smith: For the Love of Children," Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 9-October 23, 1984. NOTE: Despite the many challenges she faced as a woman artist, Jessie Willcox Smith rose as one of the most commercially successful and highest paid illustrators of her time. Born in Philadelphia, she first embraced an academic path by training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins. After graduating in 1888, she followed her taste for illustrating art by landing a job within the advertising department of Ladies' Home, the first American all-women's magazine. Five years later, when she learned that famed illustrator Howard Pyle (1853-1911) was starting a School of Illustration at Drexel Institute, Smith applied and was accepted into the inaugural class along with Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966), Violet Oakley (1874-1961) and Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871-1954). Almost immediately, the three women became close friends. They later formed a partnership and for fifteen years were known as "The Red Rose Girls" - a nickname derived from the Villanova, PA inn where they collectively lived. Such a partnership may have been judged scandalous at a time when drawing was not a common profession for women, and was even considered unladylike. However, using their raw talent and wit, "The Red Rose Girls" and Jessie Willcox Smith in particular became successful by targeting an accepted, and very respectable artistic pursuit: that of children's books and family-oriented illustration. In that regard, Smith's work is reminiscent of that of Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), who shared the same appeal for intimate and candid depictions of children. The present work fits within this celebrated theme. It depicts Lucretia, the daughter of Jessie Willcox Smith's local doctor in Chestnut Hill, whom the artist thanked for his service through this portrait. For many years, Lucretia served as a symbol of what a healthy child would look like in the post-war years, and therefore appeared in several commercials from the 1930s, especially for milk and other dairy products. See More