I love children’s illustrated books like those of the Petershams. Eve M. Kahn wrote an article about the couple in the NY Times “Antiques” column prior to the opening of a retrospective at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum.
“Maud and Miska Petersham, married book illustrators in Woodstock, N.Y., sat across from each other as they worked. From the 1920s to the ’50s, they ran a prolific studio at their handmade stone house. They took on classic stories like ‘Heidi’ and ‘Rip van Winkle,’ along with nonfiction about rayon and wool that is now obscure, and Queen Marie of Romania’s fairy tale starring a magic doll.
“Children and teachers sent fan mail. ‘It has gone through the school like wildfire,’ a Utah schoolteacher wrote to the Petershams in 1941, praising the couple’s alphabet book with patriotic pictures.
“The Petersham archive survives in the hands of family members and the University of Southern Mississippi’s library. The historian Lawrence Webster mined the material for a book, “Under the North Light: The Life and Work of Maud and Miska Petersham” (WoodstockArts). …
“Miska Petersham grew up in Hungary. Around 1912, shortly before he moved to New York, he Americanized his original name, Mihaly Petrezselyem. …
“The Petershams’ house on Glasco Turnpike [in Woodstock], with floor-to-ceiling windows that illuminated their drafting tables, is largely unchanged and has been on the market for about $440,000,” a short sale.
More. (Scroll down.) The show, “Inspired by the North Light,” runs through December 31.
Photograph from Lawrence Webster shows one of Maud and Miska Petersham’s illustrations for the children’s book “The Poppy Seed Cakes.”
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 