At the back of the North Wind
A 1919 Philadelphia edition of George MacDonald's fairy tale At the Back of the North Wind, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith for young readers. The pictures show children in quiet domestic and seaside settings, painted in soft, warm colour with careful attention to costume and gesture. A designer might take from them the gentle, sentimental tone of early twentieth-century children's book art and its restrained palette of rose, blue and earth tones.
