Dec 06, 2018 - Sale 2495

Sale 2495 - Lot 20

Unsold
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
W.W. DENSLOW.
"There was an Old Woman Tossed up in a Basket." Illustration published in "Ye Old Time Nursery Rhymes by Mother Goose" (Buffalo: Baldwin & Strachan, 1939) but created circa 1910 for advertising pamphlets. Pen and ink with graphite tracing, on stiff paper. 368x495 mm; 14 1/2x19 1/2 inches. Signed "DEN" and with seahorse monogram in lower right image and captioned in pencil in upper margin. Some toning to outer margins.

Additional Details

This illustration, and the one in lot 20 below, were re-discovered after Denslow's death and published in the late 1930s but had first appeared in the teens. The pictures debuted in "Youth Magazine," a hand-out to patrons of Dodd's Dairy in Buffalo, New York. See Greene, Douglas G. and Michael Patrick Hearn, "W. W. Denslow" (Mount Pleasant: Clarke Historical Library, 1976).

Both images are unusually large for Denslow's children's book illustrations.