Artist, children’s book illustrator.

17 March 1846 – 6 November 1901

A Tribute to Kate Greenaway by Jo Devereux

Kate Greenaway, celebrated author and illustrator of late nineteenth-century children’s books, may seem an odd choice for a project on women for women. Throughout her life, Greenaway was deeply influenced by male artists, engravers, illustrators, and critics, from her father, the engraver John Greenaway, to the foremost art critic of the age, John Ruskin.[i] Yet Kate’s struggles to claim her place as the most successful female illustrator of her time make her a worthy subject of this project. It would, of course, be wrong to hold Kate Greenaway up as a feminist. In fact, some of her letters underline how very far from feminist her views of women’s abilities versus men’s were. For example, in a letter to Violet Dickinson (friend of Virginia Woolf), dated 11 February 1897, Kate writes:

Then there are the strong-minded women, who hold up to my vision the hatefulness and shortcomings of MAN—How they are going to have exhibitions in this Victoria year, and crush MAN beneath their feet by having everything to themselves and showing how much better they can do it—???? Worm as I am, my friend, oh what a worm they would think me if I dared write and say my true views, that having been always fairly and justly treated by those odious men that I would far rather exhibit my things with them and take my true place, which must be lower than so many of theirs. For I fear we can only hope to do—what men can do. It is sad but I fear it is so. They have more ability.[ii]

Sad indeed! But I would argue that, in spite of her retrograde views, Kate Greenaway is an inspiring female artist of the late nineteenth century.

The daughter of a wood engraver and a dress shop owner, Kate began studying art when she was very young: from age 7 to 13 (1853-1859), she attended the Female School of Art, Clerkenwell; from 13 to 19, she studied at the Finsbury School of Art; from 19-23, she attended both the Female School of Art, South Kensington, and Heatherley’s School of Art; and in 1871, at age 25, she enrolled at the Slade School of Art.

By then, she was already a professional artist: in fact, while she was still a student, Kate began to receive her first commissions, and these pointed her towards children’s book illustration. In 1867, she drew the frontispiece for Infant Amusements, or How to Make a Nursery Happy; the following year saw her first public exhibition, at the Dudley Gallery, Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly: “six drawings on wood of fairies and gnomes.”[iii] In 1869, she produced watercolour designs for Diamonds and Toads, published by Frederick Warne. Yet, even as she launched her professional career, Kate continued her studies.

At the South Kensington Schools, the focus on drawing geometric shapes and on learning design skills served Kate well in her early development as an artist. She moved rapidly through the course and won medals for her work, and her ambition to study more than decorative art is evident in the fact that she and another well-known female artist, Elizabeth Thompson (later Lady Butler) held life classes in a studio outside the school to practise drawing nudes. But, whereas Butler became a very successful fine artist—especially following the triumph of The Roll Call, which caused a sensation when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874—her classmate Kate moved inexorably into the role of illustrator. Moreover, Kate evidently experienced some difficulty in the transition from the rigid system of the South Kensington Schools to the more open methods of Edward Poynter’s newly established Slade School of Art. Her carefully designed and restrained figures, with their old-fashioned Regency style clothing, seem to have developed in spite of her training at the Slade.

In 1870, Kate produced colour lithographed cards for Marcus Ward & Co., and these caught the eye of the innovative wood engraver Edmund Evans. Evans’s method of chromoxylography was used in printing the enormously successful children’s books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Richard Doyle. That Kate was included in this august company of the top male illustrators of the 1870s and 1880s is a tribute to her abilities, her diligence, and her inimitable style.  Her first book with Evans, Under the Window (1878), shows her signature images of happy yet somehow affectless children in pastoral settings. For example, “Higgledy-piggledy” is illustrated with a scene of children running across a field and away from an old-fashioned walled town in the background, the parade of children balanced by a flock of birds in the sky on the left-hand side of the picture.

This image resembles some of Kate’s illustrations for Robert Browning’s The Pied Piper of Hamelin, in an edition engraved by Edmund Evans and published by George Routledge & Sons in 1887. Ruskin told Kate that, for him, this was this “the best book you ever did.”[iv] The picture of the children following the piper runs over several pages, emphasizing the numbers of the children and the great loss to the town.

This almost hectic image contrasts with the full-page illustration of the children dancing happily—some even smiling—around a cherry tree in bloom, while other children sit in the grass, and at the left-hand side of the picture some smaller children are hugging the piper affectionately as he plays his pipe.

The children’s innocence and purity are signalled by their plain white clothing and the wreathed flowers in their hair, in contrast with the bright red and gold of the piper’s pointed hat and long cloak.  

I single out these illustrations from the many hundreds that Kate made because they epitomise the qualities that made Kate Greenaway so successful in her lifetime and that have made her books still popular today among many competitors in the nursery book market over the past century and a half. Her nostalgic visions of innocent children in idealised pastoral settings were in many ways the result of Ruskin’s advice to Kate from the early 1880s onward: to eliminate anything harsh, or any “ugly nonsense,” as he called it in a letter to the artist Stacy Marks (best known for his bird paintings) in 1882.[v] Before she met Ruskin, Kate showed signs of a slightly more sinister or perhaps occult style, for example, in her early watercolour The Elf Ring, reproduced in M.H. Spielmann and G.S. Layard’s Kate Greenaway

and in her illustration “Dolly’s Dream,” published in the Illustrated London News for 15 December 1875.

Rodney Engen suggests that The Elf Ring recalls the work of Richard Dadd, and I can see the resemblance to Dadd’s painting of Puck. (In fact, Kate’s sister Fanny married into the Dadd family, a curious coincidence!) Engen also notes that “Dolly’s Dream” resembles John Tenniel’s illustration of Alice and the Dodo for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).[vi]  I would suggest that Kate’s early work prefigures Palmer Cox’s Brownie comics of the 1880s and 1890s. Had Kate not been so much directed—or oppressed—by Ruskin’s opinions, she might well have been a caricaturist. Certainly, the drawings she included in her letters to Violet Dickinson reveal a satirical streak).

Instead of taking that path—and who’s to say that it would have been better?—Kate continued to toe the line drawn by Ruskin and other male mentors, such as Stacy Marks, the reverend William Loftie, and the poet Frederick Locker. She also kept very busy right to the end of her life. From 1883 to 1897, Kate produced an annual Almanack, in addition to her many illustrations for other writers, as well as books of games, of poetry, of spelling, of painting, and alphabets. In other words, she was hugely prolific virtually until her death from breast cancer in 1901. To the last, she steadfastly refused to join any women’s organizations or to fight for women’s suffrage. Like Queen Victoria, who died the same year, Kate exercised her own powers and talents from within the patriarchy rather than trying to resist or overturn it. Nevertheless, although by no means a feminist, Kate Greenaway was a unique talent and an inspiring female artist and illustrator, and the world would be poorer without her charming window onto a more innocent and serene time and place.

JO DEVEREUX is an assistant professor of English literature at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of The Making of Women Artists in Victorian England (McFarland, 2016) and editor of Nineteenth-Century Women Illustrators and Cartoonists (Manchester University Press, 2023). She is currently working as co-editor, with Pamela Fletcher and Alison Syme, on a four-volume collection of primary materials on the Victorian Artist for Routledge, forthcoming in 2024. 

[i] In the chapter on Kate Greenaway in my The Making of Women Artists in Victorian England (McFarland, 2016), I discuss the influence of these male mentors on Kate at some length.

[ii] Kate Greenaway to Miss Violet Dickinson, Feb. 11, 1897; reprinted in M.H. Spielmann and G.S. Layard, Kate Greenaway (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1905), p. 214.

[iii] Rodney Engen, Kate Greenaway: A Biography (London: MacDonald, 1981), p. 40.

[iv] Ruskin to Kate Greenaway, Brantwood May-day 1889; reprinted in Spielmann and Layard, p. 175.

[v] John Ruskin, quoted in Spielmann and Layard, p. 109.

[vi] Engen, p. 51.

MINI BIOGRAPHY

Education:

Mostly home schooled. 

1853-1859 Attended the Female School of Art, Clerkenwell.

1858 – 1864 Studied at the Finsbury School of Art where she discovered her passion for art and learned arts craftsmanship.

1865-1869 Attended South Kensington School of Art but discovered women were unable to attend figure drawing classes. So, also attended evening life drawing classes at Heatherley’s School of Art.

1871 Enrolled at the Slade School of Art, studying under Alphonese Legros. The School advertised equal opportunities for men and women. 

Some Key Achievements and Interests

1886 Exhibited her watercolour drawings at the Dudley Gallery.

1868 Started taking on commissions for greetings cards and book designs, and later book plates. She began to develop a reputation for her depiction of dress that reflected the fashion popularised by the Aesthetic Movement.

With the support of Edward Evans agreed a publishing deal with George Routledge. 

1879 Publication of Under the Willow sold 100,000 copies during her lifetime in England, America and Europe. 

Through the support of Frederick Locker-Lampson entered social events and met useful contacts leading to commissions to paint the portraits of wealthy patrons and to display her painting at the Royal Academy. 

1883 Published Little Ann and Other Poems which sold 90,000 copies in England, America, France and Germany.

1889 Successfully submitted book illustrations to the Paris Universal Exhibition.

1889 Elected to membership of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.

1891,1894,1898 Displayed her illustrations at the gallery of the Fine Art Society. 

1955 The Kate Greenaway Medal was created as an annual award for the most prominent contribution to children’s illustration.

Issues

Financial difficulties caused the family to move around while she was young. This, however, led her to escape into the world of her imagination. While this inspired her illustrations, it also affected her ability to interact socially and she fared badly at school. 

Her lack of writing skills showed in the verse she wrote and she had to accept help editing her work. 

Her success brought with it much criticism related to her being a woman in a man’s world.

1890s Suffered from cancer dying in 1901.

Connection to Bloomsbury

The Slade School of Art, Bloomsbury.

Female Network included

Anna Thackerary Ritchie, Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), Helen Allingham, Joan Severn, Lady Dorothy Neville, Lady Jeune (Susan Marie Elizabeth Stewart Mackenzie, Society hostess), Violet Dickinson.

Work included:

1879 Under the Willow.

1880 Kate Greenaway’s Birthday Book for Children. 

1880 Mother Goose, or, The Old Nursery Rhymes.

1881 A Day in a Child’s LIfe.

1883 Little Ann and Other Poems. 

1884 The Language of Flowers.

1884 Mavor, William; The English Spelling Book new edition included Greenaway’s illustrations.

1887 Illlustrated Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Further reading:

Greenaway, Catherine [Kate] (1846–1901), illustrator | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (oxforddnb.com)

“Kate Greenaway”; Britannica; 13 March 2023; https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kate-Greenaway

“Kate Greenaway’; Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia; 2009; https://www.refseek.com/data/cache/en/1/Kate_Greenaway.html

“Kate Greenaway (1846-1901)”; Royal Academy; https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/kate-greenaway

“The Life of Kate Greenaway (1846-1901)”; The History Press;  https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-life-of-kate-greenaway-1846-1901/

Kate Greenaway – Illustration History

Cow, Elizabeth C; Enriqueta Rylands: the public and private collecting of a Nonconformist
bibliophile, 1889-1908; FULL_TEXT.PDF (manchester.ac.uk)