Elizabeth Shippen Green, 90 x 90 No.1
Elizabeth Shippen Green was born today in 1871. She became known as one of the "Red Rose Girls," along with Jessie Willcox Smith and Violet Oakley. Green, Oakley, and Willcox Smith studied together under Howard Pyle in 1897 and afterwards formed a household sharing their professional and personal lives for fourteen years. Alice Carter published a book on the Red Rose Girls in 2000.
Elizabeth illustrated for magazines like Harper’s Monthly, where–notably–she had a contract; she was known, along with her colleagues, for representations of children and domestic scenes in a Victorian-influenced romantic style. Martha Kennedy at the Library of Congress has curated an exhibition on Shippen Green's work, called A Petal from the Rose: Illustrations by Elizabeth Shippen Green.
Collected here are monochrome and full color images from two books illustrated by ESGE, as she began to sign her name in 1911 after marrying Huger Elliott: from that same year, The Mansion, by Henry Van Dyke; and most notably the 1922 edition of Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb (1807). These two books came to the Modern Graphic History Library as part of the Walt Reed Illustration Archive.
Elizabeth Shippen Green, What angel wakes me from my flowery bed, illustration for a tale from A Midsummer Night's Dream in Tales From Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, 1922. (Note Bottom with an ass head back left.)
Elizabeth Shippen Green, Look thou but sweet and I am proof against their enmity, illustration for a tale from Romeo and Juliet in Tales From Shakespeare.
Elizabeth Shippen Green, The Tempest, illustration in Tales From Shakespeare.
Elizabeth Shippen Green, illustrator's note with self-portrait in Tales From Shakespeare. I find this is quite charming.
Elizabeth Shippen Green, detail, illustrator's note with self-portrait. This is speculation on my part, but the figure leaning in the window with the 30-60-90 triangle is probably ESG's husband Huger Eliiott, an architecture professor, with whom she collaborated on an alphabet book in the 1940s. (A copy of which I would like to find.)
Elizabeth Shippen Green, frontispiece illustration showing the Bard on his knees, offering a folio to Queen Elizabeth enthroned for Tales From Shakespeare. The predella features a family with young readers kneeling before an elephantine edition of the Lambs' book, possibly the 1866 edition illustrated by Gilbert. An ersatz virgin in glory.
Elizabeth Shippen Green, But how have I failed so wretchedly, frontispiece illustration for The Mansion, 1911. Screen shot from the Internet Archive.
Elizabeth Shippen Green, But how have I failed so wretchedly. Lovely little bit of pink waft, no? Who is that?