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Virginia Sterrett Collection Throughout the page that follows, we have presented a selection of vintage images from Virginia Sterrett.
These images are drawn from her contributions to titles including: Old French Fairy Tales (1920); Tanglewood Tales (1921); and Arabian Nights (1928).
We have developed a range of Giftware that includes images reproduced from many of the 1st Edition plates in our collection to ensure the most accurate form, line and colour possible. We have utilised a high definition capture and reproduction technique for the images - in contrast to the low definition representation necessary for this website. The illustrations are available as cards, infants' clothing, T-shirts and unmatted, matted or framed prints (8x6", 10x8", 12x10", 15x10" and 30 x 20" images sizes). Pricing starts at US$4 for single Gift Cards (US$18 for select packs of 6) and 10 x 8" prints (double-matted and framed) begin at US$60. Further details on those reproduction images are available at the Giftware section of this site.
Should you wish to discuss an order, please contact us at ThePeople@SpiritoftheAges.com referencing your request with the Stock Code of the plate, or plates in question and a brief description (and rest assured, we do accept payment through PayPal or Direct Bank Deposit).
In the meantime, enjoy browsing our selection of genuine vintage and antique plates.
The Artwork of Virginia Sterrett Virigina Sterrett (1900-1931) was an American artist of extraordinary talent. During her short life, she left the World with many beautiful images that displayed her outstanding ability to imbibe fantasy images with the spirit of her own age.
Sterrett received her first commission at the tender age of 19 (shortly after she was diagnosed with Tuberculosis) from The Penn Publishing Company to illustrate Old French Fairy Tales - a collection of works from the 19th Century French author, Comtesse de Ségur (Sophie Fedorovna Rostopchine).
A year after the publication of Old French Fairy Tales, a new title including commissioned works from Sterrett was presented by The Penn Publishing Company - Tanglewood Tales.
From 1923, in failing health, Sterrett was able to work on projects for short periods of time only and as a result, she was able to complete just one further commission prior to her death - her own interpretation of Arabian Nights.
The comments of the St Louis Post-Dispatch in the supplement published following Sterrett's death (published 5 July 1931) pay fitting tribute to her life and work:
Her achievement was beauty, a delicate, fantastic beauty, created with brush and pencil. Almost unschooled in art, her life spent in prosaic places of the West and Middle West, she made pictures of haunting loveliness, suggesting Oriental lands she never saw and magical realms no one ever knew except in the dreams of childhood ...
Perhaps it was the hardships of her own life that gave the young artist's work its fanciful quality. In the imaginative scenes she set down on paper she must have escaped from the harsh actualities of existence.
Old French Fairy Tales is a collection drawn from the work of Sophie Feoderovna Rostopchine (1799-1874) - a 19th Century French writer of Russian birth - also known as Comtesse de Ségur.
Sterrett's colour illustrations to accompany Old French Fairy Tales are exquisite and her monotone illustrations have a similarly unique style. Her illustrations have been compared to those of Kay Nielsen and while such comparisons are high praise indeed, Sterrett's style captures the spirit of her age in idiosyncratic fashion that requires no comparison to her contemporaries.
The version of Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales developed by The Penn Publishing Company includes the following tales: "The Minotaur"; "The Pygmies"; "The Dragon's Teeth"; "Circe's Palace"; "The Pomegranate Seeds"; and "The Golden Fleece".
Sterrett's illustrations to accompany the tales based on myths from Ancient Greece blend elements of Art Nouveau and Art Deco with influences from Antiquity to magical effect.
Arabian Nights, as illustrated by Virginia Sterrett, is a compilation of tales edited by Hildegard Hawthorne. In her Foreward, Hawthorne provides an overview of the stories thus:
The stories known as the Thousand and One Nights are very old. They are known to have existed from as early as the Thirteenth Century, and many of them were told, quite possibly, as early as the Ninth ...
Only a very few of the stories are contained in this book, but they are among the most famous. You will find the English a little quaint, not just what is used to tell a story today, but not enough so to be a bother. As you read you must fancy that it is Scheherazade who is speaking, in her low and musical voice, while her slave girl lies at her feet and the sultan sits beside her on the rich couch with its Eastern hangings. Remember that she is telling each story to save her life, and the lives of the many maidens who would follow her to death if she should fail to hold the interest of her husband. She breaks off as day comes, and always she tried to do this at a point that will make him anxious to hear more. It is she who invented the continued story. Through the tall, narrow windows, with their arched tops, veiled with silken curtains, the sun at length pierces, and at that signal she must stop - safe, she hopes, for another day.
Sterrett's illustrations to accompany Arabian Nights were her final suite of illustrations prepared prior to her death. She had worked on them for many years prior to the publication of the tales in 1928 and they are truly magnificent.
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