Kate Greenaway was a greeting card artist whose father, an engraver, wrote to his former colleague, the printer Edmund Evans, to arrange a viewing of her artwork. Evans then produced Under the Window in 1879 (Illustration History, n.d.). The Victorian Web, a scholarly site on Victorian art and literature, reports that the book sold about 100,000 copies in Greenaway’s lifetime, roughly 70,000 in England and 30,000 in France and Germany, citing Carpenter and Prichard (Victorian Web, n.d.). The reference entry on Greenaway at Encyclopedia.com notes that the illustrations use ample white space, as Japanese prints do, which reflects their influence (Encyclopedia.com, n.d.). This work demonstrates how modern printing influenced global design practices, since a London book borrowed from Japanese technique and then circulated in multiple European languages. In other words, Greenaway’s book reached a global audience through commercial print publishing. In terms of gender, Greenaway designed the illustrations while Evans engraved and printed them. Her work shows illustration as one pathway that brought women into design, and this pathway likely helped lay the groundwork for the later rise of women as the majority of design students. Mass-produced picture books created steady demand for illustrators, and Greenaway’s success shows that a woman could build a career on that demand and gain international recognition.
Encyclopedia.com. (n.d.). Greenaway, Kate 1846-1901. https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/academic-and-educational-journals/greenaway-kate-1846-1901
Illustration History. (n.d.). Kate Greenaway. https://www.illustrationhistory.org/artists/kate-greenaway
Victorian Web. (n.d.). Kate Greenaway. https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/greenaway/bio.html
