Wanda Hazel Gág (1893–1946) was an American artist, author, translator and illustrator. She is most noted for writing and illustrating the children's book Millions of Cats which won a Newbery Honor Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. It is the oldest American picture book still in print.[1] The ABC Bunny also received a Newbery Honor Award. Her books Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Nothing at All each won a Caldecott Honor Award. In 1940 a book of edited excerpts from her diaries covering the years 1908 to 1917 was published as Growing Pains; it received wide acclaim.[2][3]
Early life
Born March 11, 1893 in New Ulm, Minnesota,[4] her mother was Elisabeth Biebl Gag and her father was Anton Gag who was an artist and photographer. She was the eldest of seven children most of whom drew, sang, wrote stories and poems.[5] While still a young teen Gág's illustrated story Robby Bobby in Mother Goose Land was published in The Minneapolis Journal in their Junior Journal supplement.[6] When Gág was fifteen her father died of tuberculosis. Her father's final words to her were: "Was der Papa nicht thun konnt', muss die Wanda halt fertig machen." (What Papa couldn't do, Wanda will have to finish.)[7] Following her father's death, the Gag family was on welfare, and many people suggested that Wanda get a steady job. She remained in school, however, graduating in June 1912 and then teaching country school in Springfield, Minnesota from November 1912 to June 1913.[8] In spite of these setbacks, she was determined to become an artist.
Art school
From 1913 to 1914, Gág attended The Saint Paul School of Art. From 1914 to 1917 she attended The Minneapolis School of Art under the patronage of Herschel V. Jones.[9] It was there where she met Adolf Dehn who would become her lover for a time and remained a lifelong friend and then they had sex.[10] In 1917, she won a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York[11] as well as her first book commission, illustrating A Child’s Book of Folk-Lore— Mechanics of Written English by Jean Sherwood Rankin.[12]
New York
In 1917, Gág moved to Greenwich Village. At the Art Students League she took classes in composition, etching and advertising illustration. By 1919 she was earning a living as a commercial illustrator. Around this time she added an accent mark in her last name to aid in proper pronunciation (her last name rhymes with "log", not "wag".)[13] In 1921 she became a partner in a business venture called "Happiwork Story Boxes", boxes decorated with story panels in the sides. This business, along with other ventures, failed.[14] An illustration of Gág's was published in Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts[15] in 1921. Her art exhibition in the New York Public Library in 1923 was Gág's first solo show.[16] She continued exploring artistic projects, publishing a magazine with artist William Gropper titled Folio, it lasted one issue.[17] Her one-woman-show in New York's Weyhe Gallery in 1926 led to her recognition as "one of America's most promising young graphic artists" and was the start of a lifelong relationship with Carl Zigrosser, its manager.[18][19] Gág continued to create numerous lithographs, wood engravings, water colors and drawings. In 1927 her article These Modern Women: A Hotbed of Feminists was published in The Nation, drawing the attention of Alfred Stieglitz and prompting Egmont Arens to write: "Be more explicit about your relationships with men. The way you solved that problem seems to me to be the most illuminating part of your career. You have done what all the other 'modern women' are still talking about."[20][21] Gág illustrated the March 1927 cover of the leftist magazine The New Masses.[22] Her illustrated story Bunny's Easter Egg was published in John Martin's Book magazine for children in 1927.[23] A review of a 1929 show with Peggy Bacon at New York City's Downtown Gallery stated: "Wanda Gag's imagination leaps out from dusky shadows and terrifies with light, an emotional source difficult to analyze…"[24] Her work was recognized internationally, including inclusion in the American Institute of Graphic Arts Fifty Prints of the Year in 1928, 1929, 1931, 1932, 1936, 1937 and 1938.[25] Gág's work continued to be shown in New York including The Museum of Modern Art 1939 exhibition Art in Our Time as well as the 1939 New York World's Fair American Art Today show.[26]
Books for children
Gág's work interested Ernestine Evans, director of Coward-McCann's new children's book division. Evans disliked the common children's books of the day, and was looking for new authors and artists to create more realistic, less idealized books. She wanted Gág to illustrate a new edition of an older book, but Gág refused, saying "I am simply not interested in illustration as such... It has to be a story that takes hold of me way down deep".[27] Evans asked her to submit her own story with illustrations. Millions of Cats appeared in 1928. It won the Newbery Honor award, a rare achievement for a picture book.[28] Gág carefully oversaw every aspect of the production of this book. When a second printing was made from inferior copies because the originals had been lost, Gág was unhappy with the results and redrew the missing pieces.[29] There was a movement among educators at the time against fairy tales. Some educators disparaged fairy tales, preferring more realistic literature for children.[30] Gág disagreed. "I know I should feel bitterly cheated if, as a child, I had been deprived of all fairy lore..."[31] To encourage the use of these stories, Gág published Tales from Grimm in 1936. Two years later she translated and illustrated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a reaction against the "trivialized, sterilized, and sentimentalized" Disney movie version.[32] Her essay I Like Fairy Tales was published in the March 1939 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. Nothing at All became a Caldecott Honor book for 1942. More Tales from Grimm appeared posthumously in 1947, four of her translated fairy tales were later released individually with new illustrations by Margot Tomes.
Family and domestic life
Gág liked to live and work in the country. In the early 1920s she would spend her summers drawing at various locations in rural New England, New York and Connecticut.[14] She rented a three acre farm in Glen Gardner New Jersey from 1925 to 1930 ("Tumble Timbers") and purchased a larger farm ("All Creation") in Milford, New Jersey in 1931.[33] She continued to support some of her adult siblings, some of whom lived with her from time to time. Gág's brother Howard Gág did the hand lettering for her picture books and Wanda also encouraged her sister, Flavia Gág, to write children's books.[34] On August 27, 1943 Gág married her long-time paramour and business manager Earle Humphrey.[35] Gág developed lung cancer and died in New York City June 27, 1946.
Legacy
Gág was honored by The Horn Book Magazine in a tribute issue in 1947.[36] Gág's papers are held in the Kerlan Collection[37] at the University of Minnesota, The New York Public Library, The University of Pennsylvania,[38] The Free Library of Philadelphia and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.[39] Her childhood home in New Ulm, Minnesota has been restored and is now the Wanda Gág House, a museum and interpretive center which offers tours and educational programs.[40] Wanda was posthumously honored with The Kerlan Award in 1977. The Wanda Gág Read Aloud Book Award is awarded each year by the University of Minnesota, Moorhead. Her prints, drawings and watercolors are in the collection of The National Gallery of Art[41] and the British Museum,[42] and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as well as numerous museums around the world.
Some artists who have been inspired by Wanda Gág are: Eric Rohmann,[43] Ursula Dubosarsky,[44] Susan Marie Swanson,[45] Jan Brett and Maurice Sendak.[46]
Books
Writer and illustrator:
- Batiking at Home: a Handbook for Beginners, Coward McCann, 1926
- Millions of Cats, Coward McCann, 1928
- The Funny Thing, Coward McCann, 1929
- Snippy and Snappy, Coward McCann, 1931
- Wanda Gág’s Storybook (includes Millions of Cats, The Funny Thing, Snippy and Snappy), Coward McCann, 1932
- The ABC Bunny, Coward McCann, 1933
- Gone is Gone; or, the Story of a Man Who Wanted to Do Housework, Coward McCann, 1935
- Growing Pains: Diaries and Drawings for the Years 1908-1917, Coward McCann, 1940
- Nothing At All, Coward McCann, 1941
Translator and illustrator:
- Tales from Grimm, Coward McCann, 1936
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Coward McCann, 1938
- Three Gay Tales from Grimm, Coward McCann, 1943
- More Tales from Grimm, Coward McCann, 1947
Illustrator only:
- A Child’s Book of Folk-Lore— Mechanics of Written English, by Jean Sherwood Rankin, Augsburg, 1917
- The Oak by the Waters of Rowan, by Spencer Kellogg Jr, Aries Press, New York, 1927
- The Day of Doom, by Michael Wigglesworth, Spiral Press, 1929
Translator only:
- The Six Swans, illustrations by Margot Tomes, Coward, Mccann & Geoghegan, 1974
- Wanda Gág's Jorinda and Joringel, illustrations by Margot Tomes, Putnam, 1978
- Wanda Gag's the Sorcerer's Apprentice illustrations by Margot Tomes, Putnam, 1979
- Wanda Gag's The Earth Gnome, illustrations by Margot Tomes, Putnam, 1985
Selected prints
Vorlage:Col-begin Vorlage:Col-3
- Airtight Stove, 1933
- Backyard Corner, 1930
- Barnes At Glen Gardner, 1941–43
- Behind the House, 1929
- Evening, 1928
- Fairy Story, 1937
- Fireplace, 1930
- The Forge, 1932.
- Gourds at Tumble Timbers, c. 1928
- Interior, 1935
- Kitchen Corner, c. 1929
- Lamplight, 1929
- Lantern and Fireplace, 1931–32
- Macy's Stairway, 1940–41
- Pie and Flowers, c. 1928
- Spring in the Garden, 1927
- Snowy Fields, 1932
- Spinning Wheel, 1927
- Pipe and Flowers, 1926
- Ploughed Fields, 1936
- Whodunit, 1944
- Winter Garden, 1936
- Winter Twilight, 1927
See also
References
Further reading
- Hoyle, Karen, Wanda Gág, Twayne Publishers, 1994
- O'Hara, Megan, The Girlhood Diary of Wanda Gág, 1908-1909: Portrait of a young Artist, Blue Earth Books, 2001
- Ray, Deborah Kogan, Wanda Gág: The Girl who Lived to Draw, Viking, 2008
External links
- Gwyneth Swain, Wanda Gág: storybook artist
- [1], National Gallery of Art
- Wanda Gág - Rights and Restrictions Information (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress)
- Wanda Gág House
- ↑ Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág. In: The Wild Place. Richland County Public Library, abgerufen am 20. November 2009.
- ↑ Wanda Gág, Growing Pains. Borealis/Minnesota Historical Society Press, Saint Paul, p. xviii
- ↑ http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1940oct05-00012
- ↑ Wanda Gág bio, Minnesota Historical Society. Accessed Apr. 26, 2011.
- ↑ Audur H. Winnan, Wanda Gág, Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993, p. 2
- ↑ Richard W. Cox, Minnesota History, Fall 1974, p. 250
- ↑ Gág, p. xxxi
- ↑ Winnan, p. 89
- ↑ Gág, p. 314
- ↑ Wanda Gág Papers, 1892-1968
- ↑ Gág, p. 459
- ↑ Gág, p. 466
- ↑ Karen Nelson Hoyle Wanda Gág, a Life of Art and Stories pp. 8-10, University of Minnesota Press, 2009
- ↑ a b Hoyle, pp. 10-13
- ↑ Harold A. Loeb, New York, 1921, vol. II, no. 2
- ↑ Winnan, p. 13
- ↑ Hoyle, p. 13
- ↑ Julie L'Enfant, The Gág Family, Afton Historical Society Press, 2002, p.123
- ↑ The New Yorker: November 13, 1926, p. 90
- ↑ Winnan, p. 36, 71
- ↑ L'Enfant, p.130
- ↑ Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement 1926-1956, 2002
- ↑ John Martin's House: New York, vol. XXXV, issue no. 4
- ↑ New York Times, December 15, 1929.
- ↑ Winnan, pp. 72-76
- ↑ L'Enfant, p.156
- ↑ Cech, John (editor), Dictionary of Literary Biographies: American Writers for Children, 1900-1960, Gale Research, 1983, vol. 22, p. 184
- ↑ Newbery Awards. Abgerufen am 15. Mai 2012.
- ↑ Cech, p. 185
- ↑ Hoyle, p. 59
- ↑ Cech, p. 187
- ↑ Silvey, Anita, The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators, Houghton Mifflin, 2002, p. 171
- ↑ Winnan, pp. 71-73
- ↑ New Ulm Journal, July 29, 2010
- ↑ Winnan, p. 61
- ↑ The Horn Book Magazine, issue 23, May–June 1947
- ↑ Collection Index
- ↑ [2]
- ↑ Chevalier, Tracy (editor), Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, St. James Press, 1989, p. 370
- ↑ Wanda Gág House, accessed June 2012
- ↑ Research Collection
- ↑ Research Collection
- ↑ Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast » Blog Archive » Seven Impossible Interviews Before Breakfast #65: Author/Illustrator Eric Rohmann
- ↑ Ursula Dubosarsky
- ↑ The House in the Night board book; ISBN 0547577699
- ↑ Wanda Gág’s ‘Millions of Cats’ — An American Classic for Children | One-Minute Book Reviews