Orange Groves, Reached Happily (a railroad advertisement)

The same railroad advertisement surfaces again, which is its own small lesson: when a woman's commercial work survives at all, it often survives as this — an ad clipped from a magazine, prized by collectors of trains or oranges rather than of art. Plump children fill a California grove, one of them nose-deep in a piece of fruit, while the copy promises all of it is "quickly and happily reached" by the Golden State Limited. There is real skill on the page: the tonal wash, the way the front child's face is finished while the others dissolve toward the trees. But no signature announces the artist. The sweet, round-cheeked handling points to O'Neill's advertising hand, though the picture was made to sell seats, not to carry a name.

On attribution: this advertisement carries no signature; it is linked to O'Neill only by the resemblance to her commercial style, and her authorship is unconfirmed. We include it as a period example of the anonymous advertising work that was many illustrators' real living, with that caveat noted.