#5WomenArtists: Christine von der Linn’s List As part of Women’s History Month, we’re offering a week of #5WomenArtists, inspired by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. We asked some women of Swann to tell us about their five favorite female artists. Christine von der Linn is the Senior Specialist of Illustration Art and in the Books department at Swann. She specializes in Fine Illustrated Books & Graphics. Here is her list: Maria Cosway Cosway was an accomplished painter and composer in her own right, despite the initial suppression by her husband, the famous eighteenth-century painter of portrait miniatures, Richard Cosway. The Italian-English artist not only commissioned the first portrait of Napoleon, but produced an impressive body of work, most of which is held in the Royal Academy. She possessed an abundance of charms such that Thomas Jefferson was smitten by her (the two had a brief romantic affair), and kept her friendship until his death. Maria Cosway, Self-Portrait, mezzotint, 1787.Courtesy of the Royal Collection Trust. Dorothy Lathrop Painting animals without anthropomorphic emotion is a challenge, but Lathrop was attuned to their natures and represented them with a sensitivity and love of the creature world that translated to the page. Highly skilled and proficient, she mastered all mediums and left a breathtakingly large body of work. She holds the honor of having earned the inaugural Caldecott Medal (awarded for most distinguished American picture book for children) in 1938. Dorothy Pulis Lathrop, One day Lupe found her water in a new little green glass cup, colored pencil, from Presents for Lupe, 1940.Sold December 14, 2017 for $3,000. Ilonka Karasz This intrepid Hungarian was a true Renaissance woman with a staggering creative legacy. Karasz immigrated to America in 1913 when she was 17 years old and took the Greenwich Village art scene by storm, co-founding the European-American artists’ collective, The Society of Modern Art and Design School. She produced book illustration, typography, posters, theatrical art, furniture and silverware, pioneered techniques of wallpaper and textile design and made a mark in interior design by creating the first modern children’s nursery. If that weren’t enough, she painted 186 covers for The New Yorker magazine, marking her as one of their most prolific artists. Ilonka Karasz, The Hunt, tempera on board, cover illustration for The New Yorker, 1963. Sold March 21, 2017 for $4,250. Ilonka Karasz. Courtesy of the Smithsonion Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. Agnes Miller Parker A master of British wood engraving and illustration who produced one of the most beautiful and celebrated editions of The Fables of Esope, published 1931 by The Gregynog Press, one the great twentiethth-century fine press publishers, begun in 1922 by the sisters Gwendoline and Margaret Davies, in rural mid-Wales. Parker’s sense of composition, shading and detail, which incorporated the abstract principles of Cubism and Vorticism, were simply exquisite. Anges Miller Parker, The Challenge, wood engraving, 1934. Courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland. William McCance, Agnes Miller Parker, pencil, 1919.Courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland. Elaine Lustig Cohen A special note of admiration goes out to my late friend, the brilliant graphic designer, artist, and rare book dealer, Elaine Lustig Cohen. She was a woman who championed the artistic output of the European avant-garde and blended their modernist aesthetics with a distinctly American idiom in her own design work throughout her long career spanning the 1940s to her death in 2016. Elena Lustig Cohen. Courtesy of The New York Times. Elaine Lustig Cohen, The Croaked Moon Painting, 1985.Courtesy of Elaine Lustig Cohen. We’ll be posting more lists from the women of Swann this week! Deborah Rogal Atina Sutton Lauren Goldberg Lisa Crescenzo Share Facebook Twitter March 28, 2018Author: Swann NewsCategory: Illustration Art Tags: Agnes Miller Parker Caldecott Medal Christine von der Linn Dorothy Lathrop Elaine Lustig Cohen Five Women Artists Gwendoline Davies Ilonka Karasz Margaret Davies Maria Cosway National Museum of Women in the Arts Richard Cosway The Gregynog Press The New Yorker The Society of Modern Art and Design School Thomas Jefferson William McCance Previous #5WomenArtists: Atina Sutton’s List Next #5WomenArtists – Lauren Goldberg’s List Recommended Posts #5WomenArtists: Deborah Rogal’s List Photographs & Photobooks March 26, 2018 The Four Gospels: One of the Most Important Fine Press Books of the Last Century Art Press & Illustrated Books April 4, 2011 Illustration Art: June 24, 2021 Auction Highlights Illustration Art June 2, 2021