Now Online for Pre-Bidding! “The Only Elegance” Marquis Auction. Monday, July 31, 2023 at the Hilton in Bellevue, Washington. Featuring over 400 dolls from doll historians as well as private collectors including Marianne Cieslik, Antje Lode, Marisol Valverde, Keith Kaonis and Louise Hedrick. Order your catalog today for the event. Live attendance bidding, live internet bidding, live telephone bidding and absentee bidding are available. For more information email [email protected] or call 410-224-3655.
Rose O’Neill (1874-1944) was a prolific illustrator and artist, best known for her creation, the Kewpies, one of the first mass-marketed toys in America. She was one of the first cartoonists, was an active supporter for women’s suffrage, and was the highest-paid female illustrator in the world at the height of her career.
O’Neill came from an eccentric family, but one that supported her artistic proclivities. Her father, a book dealer, relocated the family to rural Nebraska when she was three, although he possessed very little farming skill. However, she was surrounded by books, and studied the classical drawings and paintings in her father’s collection. She excelled in drama, music and dance, but found her true calling with illustration. By the age of 15, she was producing illustrations for Omaha publications, helping to earn income to support the family.
She moved to New York in 1893 to live at the Convent of the Sisters of Saint Regis, while the rest of her family moved to the Ozark mountains in Missouri. O’Neill was self-trained as an artist, and had no formal art training except for a few classes in while living in New York, which her mother sold the family cow to pay for.
With nuns accompanying her on her sales calls, O’Neill sold illustrations to many of the prominent periodicals of the day. Her work appeared in such magazines as Collier’s, Truth, McClure’s and Harper’s. Because the field was dominated by men at this time, at first she signed her work with her initials “C.R.O.” to conceal the fact that she was a woman. Later, her work in Truth made her the first syndicated female cartoonist, and she later joined the staff of Puck, a humor magazine.
Rose did not follow the typical magazine humor of the time, which perpetuated stereotypes of the urban immigrant, African Americans, and children. Her illustrations centered on the shifting roles of women and ethnic groups in society. Rose supported the suffragette movement by attending rallies and using her platform as a well-known illustrator and cartoonist to further the cause.
After her second marriage ended, she returned to Bonniebrook, her family’s land in the Ozarks. It was here that the idea for the elf-like creatures called Kewpies came to her, literally. She claims that they appeared to her in a dream and when she awoke, they were all over her room. In actuality, she had been drawing little cupids as headpieces and tailpieces for her magazine work for quite some time, but she knew what makes an excellent origin story.
In 1909,she created a series of illustrations featuring the little creatures as the main character. They were inspired by her baby brother and Cupid, the god of love, “but there is a difference,” she said. “Cupid gets himself into trouble. The Kewpies get themselves out, always searching out ways to make the world better and funnier.” They made their first public appearance in Woman’s Home Companion in December of 1909. They were immediately popular and quickly became a large merchandising industry.
O’Neill was commisioned for her Kewpie designs for magazine stories, paperdolls, and advertisements appearing in Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal as well as other periodicals, and as a comic strip for The New York Journal in the 1930’s. Popular at this time were the ‘Kewpie Kutouts’, the first of its kind double-sided paper doll.
The Kewpies were small, ceramic dolls produced in Germany, and were exremely popular. The licensing opportunities continued with the characters appearing on fabric, china, glassware, wallpaper, and picture frames all prominently featured at Rose O’Neill’s Kewpie Shop in New York. The success of the Kewpies allowed her an extravagant lifestyle that earned her the nickname “Queen of Bohemian Society.” She traveled all over, lived in Italy and Paris, and earned a fortune, $15 million in today’s dollars. Her fortune didn’t stop her from working, however; she continued to be an incredibly prolific artist, perhaps remembering her family’s time of struggle as a child.
She used the Kewpie’s fame to further the cause of women’s rights. “The Kewpie Korner Kewpiegram” by Rose O’Neill appeared in newspapers across the United States from 1917 through 1918. These small cartoons with poems promoted woman suffrage and other controversial subject matter.
Wanting to show another side of her work, she traveled to study under the great artist Rodin, where she created otherworldly, incredible works of art. These were shown with encouragement from Rodin, and well-received in Paris and Italy; however, her audience back home didn’t know what to make of these images that were so unlike her previous works.
Eventually, the Kewpies fell out of fashion, and with the Great Depression, O’Neill found herself with less and less work. An attempt at another figurine, Little Ho Ho, was put to an end when the factory burned to the ground before they could be produced. She continued to live at Bonniebrook, addressing women’s groups and teaching workshops until her death in 1944.
I made a house of houselessness,
A garden of your going:
And seven trees of seven wounds
You gave me, all unknowing:
I made a feast of golden grief
That you so lordly left me,
I made a bed of all the smiles
Whereof your lip bereft me:
I made a sun of your delay,
Your daily loss, his setting:
I made a wall of all your words
And a lock of your forgetting.
