Doll News Spring 2015 - (Page 14)
O
by Laurie W. McGill
nce upon a time a little girl
was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
The year was 1892 and the
Victorian era was in its last
decade. Children's literature was moving
away from the staid Victorian stories that
carried social morality lessons. In the
stories spun at the turn of the twentieth
century, children remained children
throughout the book. They did not grow up
and they were not bothered with real world
matters. Animals and objects were often
anthropomorphized and had adventures of
their own.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The
Wizard of Oz, Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm, Anne of Green Gables, The Wind in
the Willows, Peter Pan, The Little Princess,
The Secret Garden and Beatrix Potter's
Peter Rabbit series were popular.
This was the world in which Marian
Foster Curtiss thrived as a child.
Her favorite books were Wind in the
Willows, Alice, Uncle Remus and those
written by Rudyard Kipling.
When she was but six months old, her
family moved to Georgia. They lived in the
country, not far from Atlanta. Her brother,
Blair, her sister and she rode their bicycles
along the dusty red clay roads, gathering
blackberries and wild persimmons.
Marian once reflected, "The house where
I lived as a child was an old fashioned
Victorian one. It was in what had once
Marian Foster Curtiss was an artist for the
Index of American Design. When visiting
started to be a suburb, but for some reason
museums in search of a subject, she
the idea of the suburb had been given up
especially liked the old dolls in their faded
and everything allowed to go back to its
elegance. She discovered this papiermâché doll in the Metropolitan Museum of
natural wildness."
Art, New York. Doll, c. 1936, watercolor,
"In our backyard my sister and I had
graphite, and gouache on paperboard,
a playhouse. It was a tall wooden box
11-7/8" x 8-13/16" (30.2 x 22.4 cm),
in which the piano had come. It stood
Index of American Design 1943.8.15472.
14
SPRING 2015
between two fig trees. One had little purple
figs on it and the other big green figs. We
had doll chairs and sofas in it and a little
black stove. Among other dolls was one
called Wilhimena. She was a large rag doll
which had belonged to my mother when
she was a little girl. Wilhimena had shoebutton eyes and we were supposed to treat
her with great respect."
Marian chose drawing lessons over
piano lessons, deciding the latter held
more appeal. Neither was of particular
interest to her, but soon, she grew to love
drawing. Finding a friend who shared her
interest in art, together they combined their
modest allowances and sent off for a book
on anatomy that they had seen advertised.
Their art courses in school consisted
mostly of copying the teacher's attempts at
landscapes or covers of the Ladies' Home
Journal and the Saturday Evening Post.
They made charcoal drawings of plaster
casts of the head of Julius Caesar and
the death mask of Voltaire. But, the two
friends, anatomy book in hand, aspired
to portraiture persuading their unwilling
playmates to model for them.
Marian studied art at Sophie Newcomb
College in New Orleans. Then she studied
at the Art Students League in New York,
and much later, she happily spent a winter
in Paris at the Grande Chaumière. Her
preferred medium was watercolor and
gouache using a Chinese ink stick.
New York was exciting to Marian. She
was on the threshold of her art career and
her first attempts to sell her work were
exhilarating. One of her earliest jobs was
to create small pen and ink headings for
the woman's page of the New York Herald
Tribune. Marian was paid for each drawing
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Doll News Spring 2015
From the Editor
UFDC Officers and Regional Directors
President’s Message
Conference Calendar
A Warm Welcome to Our Newest Members
UFDC Student/ Apprentice Judge Programs
UFDC Notice of Annual Meeting
A Dream Come True – UFDC’s 66th Annual Convention 2015
Fundraising Committee Report
Miss Flora McFlimsey’s Journey
Miss Flora McFlimsey Original Paper Doll
Fashionable Fair Females: Charitable Dress in Miniature
Artists in Wonderland – Featuring the Collection of Lynn Kublank
Out of Adversity
Shared Passions 2014 Special Exhibit Shared Passions
Shared Passions 2014 Special Exhibit The Many Faces of German Dolls
Shared Passions 2014 Special Exhibit The Executive Committee and Board of Directors
Shared Passions 2014 Antique Competitive Exhibit Part 2
Shared Passions 2014 Modern Competitive Exhibit Part 2
Corinne’s Creation – A Doll’s Legacy
The Silent Witness Doll
The Unbridled Spirit of Miss Rose Percy
From Germany with Love – The Story of Annette Hermann
A Civil War Tea and Doll Exhibit
A Tradition of Caring
The Work of Your Hands
Reviewing Resources
Club Notes
Member-at-Large Form
Slate of Officers
Getting to Know Our Regional Directors
Doll-ers & Sense
Donations
In Our Memories
News & Notes
Doll News Spring 2015
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