Kate Greenaway

Catherine Greenaway (17 March 1846 – 6 November 1901) was an English Victorian artist and writer, known for her

children's book illustrations.

Her father's engravings exposed her to weekly news stories, some of which were quite grisly, such as the series of his illustrations for the Illustrated London News in 1856 about murderer William Palmer.

In 1857, at age 12, she began night classes at nearby Finsbury School, a local branch of South Kensington School of Art participating in National Course of Art Training in the decorative arts.

Night courses, open only to women, were offered in drawing, porcelain painting, wood engraving, and lithography.

She enrolled full-time a year later.

The curriculum, devised by Henry Cole, was meant to train artisans in designing decorative wallpaper, tiles, and carpets.

It emphasised strict adherence to copying geometric and botanical elements without creativity.

She received her education in graphic design and art between 1858 and 1871 from the Finsbury School of Art, the South Kensington School of Art, the Heatherley School of Art, and the Slade School of Fine Art.

She began her career designing for the burgeoning greetings card market, producing Christmas and Valentine's cards.

There were four stages of courses, which she completed in 1864 before going to the Royal Female School of Art.

The headmaster at the Royal Female School of Art was Richard Burchett, whom Elizabeth Thompson described as a "bearded, velvet-skull-capped and cold-searching-eyed man."

Greenaway was quite shy and thought of herself as plain and unattractive compared to the other students.

Yet she became friends with the much more popular Thompson, with whom she shared a studio.

The two young women worked diligently in their studio to perfect their skills.

At this point she was allowed to draw human figures, at first from plaster casts and then from models dressed in historical or ornamental costumes, skills she applied during the summers in Rolleston.

However, she was unable to fully master human anatomy; frustrated that nude models were not permitted in the women's classes, she enrolled in night classes at Heatherley School of Fine Art where she met Edward Burne-Jones, Edward Poynter, and Walter Crane.

In 1871 she enrolled in the Slade School of Fine Art, where Poynter was head master.

Determined to break from Henry Cole's rigid curriculum, he exhorted students to become more expressive and creative, concepts alien to Greenaway whose long early years of training consisted solely of copying and work with geometric designs.

She struggled at Heatherley and once again was frustrated that women were segregated from men in the life class.

While she was still in school, Greenaway received commissions for children's book illustrations.

In 1879 wood-block engraver and printer Edmund Evans printed Under the Window, an instant best-seller, which established her reputation.

Her collaboration with Evans continued throughout the 1880s and 1890s.

The depictions of children in imaginary 18th-century costumes in a Queen Anne style were extremely popular in England and internationally, sparking the Kate Greenaway style.

Within a few years of the publication of Under the Window Greenaway's work was imitated in England, Germany, and the United States.

Kate Greenaway was born in Hoxton, London, the second of four children, to a working-class family.

Her mother, Elizabeth, was a dress maker and her father, John, an engraver who gave up steady employment with Ebenezer Landells' engraving firm to strike out on his own.

When Greenaway was very young, he accepted a commission to provide the engraved illustrations to a new edition of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, sending his young family away to relatives in the countryside to give himself solitude while producing the engravings.

Kate's earliest memories are of Rolleston, Nottinghamshire, which affected her deeply.

It was a place she returned to frequently in her childhood.

According to children's literature scholar Humphrey Carpenter, the period was to Greenaway "crucial ... she felt it to be her real home, a country of the mind that she could always reimagine".

After returning to grimy London streets Rolleston became a place to visit in her mind and constantly embellish.

The publisher who commissioned John Greenaway's work went bankrupt, leaving the family without an income.

When Elizabeth Greenaway returned from Rolleston with the children, the family moved to Islington, where she opened a children's dress shop that attracted well-to-do clients.

The family lived in the flat above the shop, and young Kate, often left to her own devices to explore, spent many hours in the enclosed courtyard garden, later writing about it in her unfinished autobiography as a place filled with "richness of colour and depth of shade."

John Greenaway provided for his mother and two sisters as well as for his own family.

He took piecemeal engraving jobs, usually for weekly publications, such as The Illustrated London News.

He frequently worked on the wood carving throughout the night in front of the fire.

Kate enjoyed watching him, and through his work was exposed to illustrations by John Leech, John Gilbert, and Kenny Meadows.

As a young child Greenaway's parents taught her at home; later she was sent to various dame schools; she was an avid reader of chapbook versions of fairy tales – her favourites were "Sleeping Beauty", "Cinderella", and "Beauty and the Beast" – as well as illustrated editions of Shakespeare, writing later that children "often don’t care a bit about the books people think they will and I think they often like grown-up books – at least I did."