| Rose O'Neill | |
|---|---|
 O'Neill inc. 1907 | |
| Born | Rose Cecil O'Neill (1874-06-25)June 25, 1874 |
| Died | April 6, 1944(1944-04-06) (aged 69) Springfield, Missouri, U.S. |
| Areas |
|
Notable works | Kewpie |
| Spouses | |
Rose Cecil O'Neill (June 25, 1874 – April 6, 1944) was an Americancartoonist, illustrator, artist, and writer. She rose to fame for her creation of the popular comic strip characters,Kewpies, in 1909, and was also the first published female cartoonist in the United States.[1]
The daughter of a book salesman and a homemaker, O'Neill was raised in ruralNebraska. She exhibited interest in the arts at an early age, and sought a career as an illustrator in New York City. Her Kewpie cartoons, which made their debut in a 1909 issue ofLadies' Home Journal, were later manufactured asbisque dolls in 1912 by J. D. Kestner, a German toy company, followed bycomposition material andcelluloid versions. The dolls were wildly popular in the early twentieth century, and are considered to be one of the first mass-marketed toys in the United States.
O'Neill also wrote several novels and books of poetry, and was active in thewomen's suffrage movement. She was for a time the highest-paid female illustrator in the world upon the success of the Kewpie dolls.[2] O'Neill has been inducted into theNational Women's Hall of Fame.[3]
In 2022 atSan Diego Comic-Con, Rose O'Neill was inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame as a Comic Pioneer.[4]
O'Neill was born on June 25, 1874, inWilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the daughter of William Patrick, anIrish immigrant,[5] and Alice Asenath "Meemie" Smith O'Neill. She had two younger sisters, Lee and Callista, and three younger brothers: Hugh, James, and Clarence. The family moved to ruralNebraska while O'Neill was young. From early childhood, she expressed significant interest in the arts, immersing herself in drawing, painting, and sculpture.[2] At thirteen, she entered a children's drawing competition sponsored by theOmaha Herald[6] and won first prize for her drawing, titled "Temptation Leading to an Abyss".[7]
Within two years, O'Neill was providing illustrations for the local Omaha publicationsExcelsior andThe Great Divide as well as other periodicals, having secured this work with help from the editor at theOmaha World-Herald and the Art Director fromEverybody Magazine who had judged the competition. The income helped support her family, which her father had struggled to support as a bookseller.[5] O'Neill attended the Sacred Heart Convent school in Omaha.[8]
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To market her skills to a broader audience, O'Neill moved to New York in 1893; she stopped in Chicago en route to visit theWorld Columbian Exposition.[9] The nuns accompanied her to various publishers to sell work from her portfolio of sixty drawings. She was able to sell her drawings to numerous publishing houses and began taking orders for more.[7] A four-panel comic strip by O'Neill was featured in a September 19, 1896, issue ofTruth magazine, making her the first American woman to publish a comic strip.[1][10]
While O'Neill was living in New York, her father made ahomestead claim on a small tract of land in theOzarks wilderness of southernMissouri. The tract had a"dog-trot" cabin with two log cabins (one was used for eating and the other for sleeping) and abreezeway between. A year later when O'Neill visited the land, it had become known as "Bonniebrook".[11] During this time O'Neill was experiencing considerable success, having joined the staff ofPuck, an American humor magazine, where she was the only female on staff.[12] In 1909, she began work drawing advertisements forJell-O,[13] and contributed illustrations toHarper's andLife magazines.[14]
In 1892, while in Omaha, O'Neill met a young Virginian named Gray Latham, whom she married in 1896. He visited O'Neill in New York City, and continued writing to her when she went to Missouri to see her family. After Latham's father went toMexico to make films, he went to Bonniebrook in 1896. Concerned with the welfare of her family, O'Neill sent much of her paycheck home.[15]
In the following years O'Neill became unhappy with Latham, as he liked "living large" and gambling, and was known as aplayboy. O'Neill found that Latham, with his very expensive tastes, had spent her paychecks on himself. O'Neill then moved toTaney County, Missouri, where she filed for divorce in 1901, returning to Bonniebrook. Latham died the same year, and some sources state that O'Neill waswidowed.[14]
In late 1901, O'Neill began receiving anonymous letters and gifts in the mail.[16] She learned that they were sent byHarry Leon Wilson, an assistant editor atPuck. O'Neill and Wilson became romantically involved soon after, and married in 1902.[17] After a honeymoon inColorado, they moved to Bonniebrook, where they lived for the next several winters. During the first three years Wilson wrote two novels,The Lions of the Lord (1903) andThe Boss of Little Arcady (1905), both of which O'Neill drew illustrations for.[14] One of Wilson's later novels,Ruggles of Red Gap, became popular and was made into several motion pictures, including asilent movie, a "talkie" starringCharles Laughton, and then a remake calledFancy Pants starringLucille Ball andBob Hope. The couple divorced in 1907.[18]
In 1904, O'Neill published her first novel,The Loves of Edwy, which she also illustrated.[19] A review published byBook News in 1905 considered O'Neill's illustrations to "possess a rare breadth of sympathy with and understanding of humanity".[19]
As educational opportunities were made available in the 19th century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, and some founded their own art associations. Artwork made by women was considered to be inferior, and to help overcome that stereotype women became, according to art historian Laura Prieto, "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work. Many women artists, including O'Neill, could be characterized as examples of the educated, modern, and independentNew Woman.[20][21] According to Prieto, artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives".[21] In the late 19th century and early 20th century, about 88% of the subscribers of 11,000 magazines and periodicals were women. As women entered the artist community, publishers hired women to create illustrations that depicted the world from a woman's perspective. Other successful illustrators wereJennie Augusta Brownscombe,Jessie Willcox Smith,Elizabeth Shippen Green, andViolet Oakley.[22]
It was amid the New Woman and burgeoning suffragist movements that, in 1908, O'Neill began to concentrate on producing original artwork, and it was during this period that she created the whimsicalKewpie characters for which she became known.[23] Their name, "Kewpie", derives fromCupid, the Roman god of love.[24] According to O'Neill, she became obsessed with the idea of the cherubic characters, to the point that she had dreams about them: "I thought about the Kewpies so much that I had a dream about them where they were all doing acrobatic pranks on the coverlet of my bed. One sat in my hand."[25] She described them as "a sort of little round fairy whose one idea is to teach people to be merry and kind at the same time".[2] The Kewpie characters made their debut incomic strip form in 1909 in an issue ofLadies' Home Journal.[20] Further publications of the Kewpie comics inWoman's Home Companion andGood Housekeeping helped the cartoon grow in popularity rapidly.[26][27]
In 1913, German doll manufacturer Kestner & Co. began making Kewpie dolls. The dolls were immediately successful, and more companies were licensed to produce them in order to meet demand.[28] O'Neill repeatedly visited Germany to supervise the doll manufacturers.[29] As O'Neill rose to fame, she garnered a public reputation as abohemian, and became an ardentwomen's rights advocate.[2][30] The success of the Kewpies amassed her a fortune of $1.4 million,[23] with which she purchased properties including Bonniebrook, an apartment inWashington Square Park inGreenwich Village,Castle Carabas inConnecticut, andVilla Narcissus (bought fromCharles Caryl Coleman) on theIsle of Capri, Italy.[31] At the height of the Kewpie success, O'Neill was the highest-paid female illustrator in the world.[2][32] O'Neill was well known in New York City's artistic circles, and through her association, she was the inspiration for the song "Rose of Washington Square".[26]
O'Neill continued working, even at her wealthiest, exploring many different types of art. She learned sculpture at the hand ofAuguste Rodin and had several exhibitions of sculptures and paintings inParis and the United States.[23] These works were more experimental in nature, and largely influenced by dreams and mythology.[26] O'Neill spent 1921 to 1926 living in Paris.[26] While there, she was elected to theSociété Coloniale des Artistes Français in 1921, and had exhibitions of her sculptures at the Galerie Devambez in Paris and theWildenstein Galleries in New York in 1921 and 1922, respectively.[14]
In 1927, O'Neill returned to the United States, and by 1937 was living at Bonniebrook permanently. By the 1940s, she had lost the majority of her money and properties, partly through extravagant spending, as well as the cost of fully supporting her family, her entourage of "artistic" hangers-on, and her first husband.[15] TheGreat Depression also hurt O'Neill's fortune. During that period, O'Neill was dismayed to find that her work was no longer in demand. After thirty years of popularity, the Kewpie character phenomenon had faded, and photography was replacing illustration as a commercial vehicle. O'Neill experimented with crafting a new doll, eventually creating Little Ho Ho, which was a laughing babyBuddha. However, before plans could be finalized for production of the new little figure, the factory burned to the ground.[33]
O'Neill became a prominent personality in theBranson, Missouri community donating her time and pieces of artwork to theSchool of the Ozarks atPoint Lookout, Missouri, and remaining active in the local art community.[32]
On April 6, 1944, O'Neill died ofheart failure resulting fromparalysis at the home of her nephew inSpringfield, Missouri.[34] She is interred in the family cemetery atBonniebrook Homestead, next to her mother and several family members.[34][35]: 2–4 Bonniebrook Homestead was listed on theNational Register of Historic Places in 1997.[36]
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