GARTH WILLIAMS (American, 1912-1996). Little House on the Prairie, original cover art, 1953. Pencil on tracing paper. 10... (Total: 3 Items)

Description

GARTH WILLIAMS (American, 1912-1996)
Little House on the Prairie, original cover art, 1953
Pencil on tracing paper
10.5 x 15.5 in. (main work)
Signed lower right

Set of original artwork for the jacket design of the book including: gouache and watercolor artwork, a pencil overlay, pen and ink on illustration board, pen and ink on transparency (2), pencil on tracing paper, and a cover mock-up on tracing paper.

Anyone who has read Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic Little House on the Prairie from the early 1950s to present has seen America's heartland through the eyes of illustrator Garth Williams. Williams' scenes of the close-knit frontier family and all of their hardships have become accepted as the definitive versions, though they did not see print until the early 1950s, when they replaced the extremely stylized versions by Helen Sewell that had been used since the 1930s. As Harper editor Ursula Nordstrom later wrote, the British-born Williams "certainly had no roots in any part of the Wilder country. But as we know, thought-kin is closer than blood-kin, and Garth certainly had all the emotional equipment, as well as the technical, to illustrate these wonderful family books." Williams went on a six-month trip to research his drawings, meeting with Wilder in Mansfield, Missouri, and also journeying to other states where the well-traveled Wilder family lived growing up. Little House on the Prairie, set near Independence, Kansas, has sold eight million copies worldwide.

From the Estate of Garth Williams.



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