Rose O'Neill (a portrait photograph)

A photograph of the woman who drew the Kewpies, and worth pausing on: she was the first American woman to earn a full living as an illustrator, and she looks the part here — composed, direct, faintly amused. She sits at a round table, one hand near a shallow metal bowl, wearing an embroidered silk vest over a loose white blouse, framed pictures and a spill of ivy behind her. The setting is an artist's, not a débutante's. By the time this was taken she was among the best-paid illustrators in the country, funding a bohemian household on the strength of a chubby cartoon baby. The image of the maker survives. A great deal of what she made does not.