Blond Child in Red Dress Reading Snow White to Elf - Fairy Tale

Maud Tausey Fangel - Baby Painter.

In profile, we see a charming, young, ruddy-cheeked, blond girl with pig tales in a bright red-orange dress. She is reading Snow White as a small statue of an Elf with a green hat keeps her company. The work is deftly rendered in pastel on board in a post-impressionist style, which demonstrates her synthesis of art and commerce. On close inspection, we see an abstract pigment application.
Most likely done on assignment for one of her many magazine clients, such as. Ladies' Home Journal or Woman's Home Companion. Maud Tousey Fangel was a highly sought-after female illustrator for women's magazines and advertisements, including those for Colgate's Talc Powder, Cream of Wheat, and Squibb's Cod Liver Oil. Later in her career she would create the boy on the Cracker Jack box. She was famous for her portraits of children. In recent years, increasing attention has been focused on rediscovering highly talented and technically skilled women illustrators who were overlooked in the canon of art history. One of the characteristics they excelled in was a type narrative story telling that transcends their medium by exploring in the inner life of their subjects. Maud Tousey Fangel stated, “I have a strange, persistent feeling that babies have a consciousness that we do not possess,” she wrote. “They seem not yet to have lost an intelligence brought with them from another world. They are still wrapped in the mystery of their source.” In the present work, the viewer feels a genuine connection with the subject. Signed lower right. Framed under glass 21 x 22.5