KATE GREENAWAY (1846 - 1901)

EnglandKate Greenaway is best known as a children’s book illustrator, designer, and writer. The popular nineteenth century artist filled her best-selling first book, Under the Window, 1879, with children gathering flowers, untouched by the Industrial Revolution. The level of detail in her delicate watercolours was able to be reproduced at the time thanks to recent techniques in photolithography.

The children she depicted in her many stories became iconic, and were coined ‘Kate Greenaway children.’ They were characterized by Greenaway’s own versions of late eighteenth century and Regency fashions, featuring straw bonnets, smock-frocks, high-waisted pinafores, and skeleton suits.