Kate Greenaway

Kate Greenaway (1846-1901)

Kate Greenaway was one of the most popular illustrators of children's books in the world. She also wrote verses and her first book (Under the Window), published in 1879 was a bestseller. When Walter Crane stopped illustrating children's books she and Randolph Caldecott took over and were the most influential illustrators in the last decades of the 19th century.

Here we go with an illustration from Little Miss Muffet (Mother Goose or the Old Nursery Rhymes):

Caldecott and Greenaway were so important they each got a prestigious award for illustrations named after them. Kate Greenaway Medal is aiming to the best children's illustrators in the UK but maybe even more interesting is her influence on fashion in the last decades of the 19th century.

She apparently loved to portray children who were too young to wear trousers, so she drew them in clothes based on John Hoppner's paintings from the 18th century. Her illustrations were so influential mothers started to dress their kids in clothes based on Greenway's drawings.

Now, this is what I call artistic power!