Dorothy Lathrop was an American writer, educator and illustrator of children's books. She created her numerous artworks in the style of Art Nouveau.
Background
Lathrop was born in Albany, New York, United States, on April 16, 1891. She was the daughter of Cyrus Lathrop, a businessman, and Ida Pulis Lathrop, a painter. Her grandfather was the owner of a bookstore. Dorothy Lathrop had a sister Gertrude, who was a sculptor.
Education
Dorothy Lathrop's mother was the person who encouraged her daughter's creative pursuits. At the same time, her grandfather added to Dorothy’s personal love of literature.
Lathrop studied at Teachers College, Columbia University under the direction of Arthur Wesley Dow, an American painter, photographer, printmaker and influential arts educator. She later attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Students League in New York.
Career
Animals were the focus of much of Lathrop's art. The first book in which her illustrations showed up was The Three Mulla-Mulgars by well-known English author, Walter de la Mare, in 1919. Dorothy Lathrop became a good friend of de la Mare, and later illustrated five more of his books for children, including Down-Adown-Derry (1922), Crossings (1923), The Dutch Cheese (1931), Mr. Bumps and His Monkey (1942) and Bells and Grass (1942).
She was in high demand around this time. She was commissioned over and over again in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929, Dorothy Lathrop illustrated Rachel Field's children's novel, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. In addition, she wrote and illustrated several children’s books herself. For instance, in 1931 Lathrop wrote The Fairy Circus.
In 1938, Lathrop produced illustrations for Animals of the Bible, written by Helen Dean Fish. Among her other works were illustrations for W. H. Hudson's Little Boy Lost; Hilda Conkling's Silverhorn; Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid; George MacDonald's The Princess and Curdie and The Light Princess; Jean Ingelow's Mopsa the Fairy and her self-authored The Colt from Moon Mountain and The Lost Merry-Go-Round. She also illustrated several collections of children's poetry including work by Sara Teasdale's Stars To-night.
Dorothy Lathrop worked predominantly with pen and ink early in her career but later she altered her style and took up a lithographic pencil. The artist preferred to use real-life animal "models" when drawing her illustrations.
Views
Quotations:
"The world is not divided up into bits and classified for those from four to six, from six to eight, from eight to twelve and so on through our three score and ten years, with a special bit for octogenarians, but the same world for all of us, undivided, its riches spread out for us to choose from according to our ages in spirit rather than our ages in years."
Membership
Lathrop joined the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician in 1949.
Personality
Dorothy Lathrop had a love for animals and the natural world.
Quotes from others about the person
Anne Roberts: "Her [Dorothy Lathrop's] output was prodigious, even staggering. What makes this all the more impressive is the variety of media in which she worked: pen and ink, oil, watercolour, gouache, coloured pencil, graphite, woodcut, wood engraving, lithographic pencil, and lithographic crayon. Each medium has its own exacting demand, and she mastered them all."