Perhaps as a contrast to photographs (as well as the result of better printing technology), the 1890s saw more illustrators turn from pen and ink sketches to painting. St. Nicholas introduced two of its most prolific and popular artists during this decade: Charles Relyea and George Varian, who would illustrate adventure and sports stories for St. Nick for the next three decades. These pictures, though, are quite sedentary: Relyea’s depicts a girl watching a flight of geese, while Varian’s shows two boys reading (shown here). Funny how they actually look like real children . . . quite a contrast to the 1870s.
St. Nick was still portraying children as children -- or maybe the children reading the magazine still saw themselves as their actual ages -- whatever the reason, the average age of the kids in the illustrations seems to be between 8 and 12. Though in the decades to come, Relyea and Varian would increase the age and sophistication of the depicted children to almost frightening levels, for now, artists such as F.H. Lundgren were content to portray children as imaginative and -- well, young. Mothers were also still making the occasional appearance, complete with maternal sentiments. (My goodness! Frederick Dielman DARED to depict this mother in a dressing gown! How standards have changed . . .)
Rudyard Kipling published the '“Just So” Stories' in the 1898 St. Nick, and Oliver Herford was commissioned to do full-page illustrations that integrated the text with the pictures -- a technique previously used only with poems. (Beware -- I’ve left this sample illustration full-size.)
And finally, Arthur Rackham makes an initial appearance with these black and white illustrations for A. E. Bonser’s “The Treasure at the End of the Rainbow.” Compare these sketches with his later (1912 - 1914) paintings . . .