Frederick Richardson (1862 – 15 January 1937) was an American illustrator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best remembered for his illustrations of works by

L. Frank Baum Lyman Frank Baum (; May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author best known for his children's books, particularly ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' and its sequels. He wrote 14 novels in the ''Oz'' series, plus 41 other novels (not includ ...

Life and career

A native

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

an, Richardson studied at the

St. Louis School of Fine Arts The St. Louis School of Fine Arts was founded as the Saint Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts in 1879 as part of Washington University in St. Louis, and has continuously offered visual arts and sculpture education since then. Its purpose-buil ...

and at the

Académie Julian The Académie Julian () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) that was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number a ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. He taught at the

Chicago Art Institute The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and list of largest art museums, largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visit ...

for seven years; Albert Henry Krehbiel and Dulah Evans Krehbiel were two of his students. He was "a slightly-built, gray-eyed man" whose work "was strongly influenced by the

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

movement...." From 1892 on, if not earlier, Richardson made a living as a newspaper illustrator, working for the

Chicago Daily News The ''Chicago Daily News'' was an afternoon daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, published between 1875 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. History The ''Daily News'' was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty ...

; he produced many pictures of the famous

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordi ...

in 1893. His employers valued his work highly enough to send Richardson back to Paris to cover the ''Exposition Universelle Internationale'', the world's fair of 1900. A collection of his newspaper work from the Daily News was published in 1899. In 1903 Richardson moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to pursue book illustration. His first book was Baum's ''

Queen Zixi of Ix ''Queen Zixi of Ix, or The Story of the Magic Cloak'', is a children's book written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by Frederick Richardson. It was originally serialized in the early 20th-century American children's magazine ''St. Nicholas'' f ...

'', which was published serially in '' St. Nicholas Magazine'' in 1904 and 1905 and in book form in the latter year. Richardson also drew pictures for Baum's " A Kidnapped Santa Claus", which first appeared in ''The Delineator'' in December 1904. His artwork also appears in the California State Series "Third Reader". Richardson followed that initial work with many other book-illustration projects, including editions of the works of

Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fairy tales, consisti ...

, ''

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to ...

'', ''

Mother Goose The figure of Mother Goose is the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. As a character, she appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as a nursery rhyme. This, howeve ...

'', ''

Pinocchio Pinocchio ( , ) is a fictional character and the protagonist of the children's novel ''The Adventures of Pinocchio'' (1883) by Italian writer Carlo Collodi of Florence, Tuscany. Pinocchio was carved by a woodcarver named Geppetto in a Tuscan vil ...

'', and ''

East of the Sun and West of the Moon "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" ( no, Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne) is a Norwegian fairy tale. It was included by Andrew Lang in ''The Blue Fairy Book'' (1890). "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" was collected by Peter Christen A ...

'', plus two volumes in the series of

Andrew Lang's Fairy Books ''The Langs' Fairy Books'' are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889 and 1913 by Andrew Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne. The best known books of the series are the 12 collections ...

. Richardson did abundant work for the Chicago publisher P. F. Volland; in illustrating collections of tales by Georgene Faulkner he varied his usual artistic style, imitating Japanese art for her ''Little Peachling and Other Tales of Old Japan'' (1928), and Indian art for her ''The White Elephant and Other Tales from Old India'' (1929). Richardson provided pictures for a series of schoolbooks called the Winston Readers. He illustrated Frank R. Stockton's ''The Queen's Museum'' (1906),

Edith Ogden Harrison Edith Ogden Harrison (16 November 1862 – 22 May 1955) was a writer of children's books and fairy tales in the early decades of the 20th century. She was the wife of Carter Harrison, Jr., five-term mayor of Chicago. Biography Edith Ogden w ...

's ''The Enchanted House'' (1913), and Frances Jenkins Olcott's ''The Red Indian Fairy Book'' (1917), among other works. According to youngest son, Allan, Richardson provided a variety of illustrations to the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

during the Great Depression. For John Heming Fry's "diatribe against modernism," ''The Revolt Against Beauty'' (1934), Richardson supplied pictures that parodied the work of

Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...

and

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...

and characters from newspaper comic strips. After his death in 1937, Richardson was memorialized with a posthumous volume that matched traditional tales, like "

Three Billy Goats Gruff "Three Billy Goats Gruff" ( no, De tre bukkene Bruse) is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their '' Norske Folkeeventyr'', first published between 1841 and 1844. It has an Aarne-Thompson type of 1 ...

" and "

The Bremen Town Musicians The "Town Musicians of Bremen" (german: link=no, Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'' in 1819 (KHM 27). It tells the story of four aging domestic animals, w ...

", with brightly colored illustrations by the artist. Richardson died of pneumonia in New York City and was survived by Allan Barbour, one of his two sons. Richardson's oldest son, David Welles, preceded his father in death by a few months, having died in September 1936.Gardner and Procopio, p. 9.

References

External links

* *
1913 Illustrations from Norse Mythology
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Frederick American children's book illustrators 1862 births 1937 deaths Artists from Park Ridge, Illinois Art Nouveau illustrators American expatriates in France Deaths from pneumonia in New York City