Nell Brinkley

Nell Brinkley (September 5, 1886 – October 21, 1944) was an American illustrator and comic artist who was sometimes referred to as the "Queen of Comics" during her nearly four-decade career working with New York newspapers and magazines. She was the creator of the iconic Brinkley Girl, a stylish character who appeared in her comics and became a popular symbol in songs, films and theater.

Nell Brinkley was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1886 (some sources say 1888), but her family soon moved to the small town of Edgewater on Denver's western border, facing Sloan's Lake at Manhattan Beach. She was not formally trained in the arts, and dropped out of high school to follow her natural talent with pen and ink. As a tot, she drew place-setting illustrations of knobby-kneed kiddies for Mary Elitch's garden parties at Elitch Gardens. At the age of 16, she was already accomplished at illustration. She illustrated the book cover and 25 illustrations for a 1906 children's book, Wally Wish and Maggie Magpie by A.U. Mayfield. She was hired to do pen-and-ink drawings for The Denver Post and later the Rocky Mountain News.

Her skills were noticed in 1907 by media mogul William Randolph Hearst and his editor Arthur Brisbane. Though barely into her twenties, she was convinced to move from Denver to Brooklyn, New York, with her mother. She began working in downtown Manhattan with the Journal, where she produced large detailed illustrations with commentary almost daily. The newspaper's circulation boomed; her artwork was featured in the magazine section. Brinkley later moved to New Rochelle, New York, a well known artist colony and home to many of the top commercial illustrators of the day. She soon became well known for her breezy and entertaining creations. The curly-haired everyday working-girl drawings were known as the Brinkley Girl, who soon upstaged Charles Dana Gibson's Gibson Girl. The Ziegfeld Follies (1908) used the Brinkley Girl as a theme, and three popular songs were written about her. Bloomingdale's department store featured a Nell Brinkley Day with advertisements using many of her drawings. Women emulated the hairstyles in the cartoons and purchased Nell Brinkley Hair Curlers for ten cents a card. Young girls saved her drawings, colored them and pasted them in scrapbooks. The Denver Press Club greeted her when she vacationed in Colorado in the summer of 1908. Nell was most famous for her representing "relationships between boy and girl—man and woman—Bettys and Billies." Her illustrations used the drawing of "Dan Cupid" to represent the presence of that something most people call "love".

...
Wikipedia