Wanda Gág
Wanda Gág was an influential American author and illustrator, born on March 11, 1893, in New Ulm, Minnesota. As the eldest of seven children, she faced significant responsibilities from a young age after the death of her father. Gág's artistic talents were nurtured in a creative household, and she pursued her education in art despite financial challenges. She first gained recognition in the 1920s with her children's book "Millions of Cats," which became a Newbery Honor Book and established her place in children's literature. Gág's distinctive style, often blending folk traditions with her illustrations, continued to resonate in subsequent works, including "The ABC Bunny" and fairy tale adaptations like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Throughout her career, she contributed to various periodicals while also focusing on commercial illustration. Tragically, Gág's life was cut short by lung cancer, but her legacy endures through her beloved books, which remain cherished in the realm of children's literature.
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Subject Terms
Wanda Gág
Author
- Born: March 11, 1893
- Birthplace: New Ulm, Minnesota
- Died: June 27, 1946
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Wanda Hazel Gág was born on March 11, 1893, in New Ulm, Minnesota. She was the oldest of seven children born to Anton Gág, and artisan and painter, and Elisabeth Biebl Gág, who also had artistic inclinations. Because her father was of Bohemian descent and her mother was Czechoslovak, only German was spoken in the household, and Gág did not learn to speak English until she began attending school. Her father died when she was sixteen, and with her mother ailing, Gág took it upon herself to care for her siblings. Although they were poor, Gág managed to keep her family together and finish high school in 1912. She taught for a year and, inspired by the work of her father, began writing and illustrating for magazines and commercial projects. Her first published illustration appeared in the Junior’s Journal, a youth-oriented Sunday supplement to the Minneapolis Journal. After her two oldest sisters finished high school, Gág accepted a scholarship to St. Paul Art School in 1913 and went on to study at the Minneapolis Art School from 1914 to 1917. In 1916, her mother died, and Gág moved the family to Minneapolis. The following year she illustrated her first book, A Child’s Book of Folklore, which helped her earn a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York. She studied in New York for a year and then embarked on a career as a fashion illustrator.
In the years that followed, Gág submitted several manuscripts for children’s books to publishers; all of them were rejected. By 1923, Gág was making a living from her freelance artwork and printmaking and from contributions to The Liberator, New Masses, and other periodicals. She divided her time between New York and a country house in Connecticut that she shared with her lover, Earle Marshall Humphreys. Her first exhibition, at the Weyhe Gallery in New York in 1926, marked her entry into the contemporary art scene. When Ernestine Evans, a book editor at Coward-McCann, urged Gág to write a children’s book based on her illustrations, Gág retrieved one of her previously manuscripts and resubmitted an illustrated version. The finished book, published as Millions of Cats (1928), is a quaint story in the German folk tradition about an aging couple’s love for a pet kitten. The book was a Newbery Honor Book for the year. Gág followed it with The Funny Thing (1929) and the animal fantasy Snippy and Snappy (1931), both illustrated in the pen-and-ink style of Millions of Cats. For The ABC Bunny (1933), a simple tale of a rabbit and its outdoor life, she employed a lithographic style that earned her another Newbery honor. During the Depression, Gág concentrated more on commercial illustration for The New York Herald Tribune and other periodicals. However, she also nursed a growing interest in European folk tales and märchen, and as a result she began translating and illustrating fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. The first of these, Gone is Gone: Or, The Story of a Man Who Wanted to Do Housework, appeared in 1935. It was followed by Tales from Grimm (1936). In 1938 she produced an illustrated retelling of the Snow White tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to coincide with the release of the Walt Disney movie. It earned her the first of her two Caldecott Honor Book awards. Nothing at All (1941), a tale of an invisible dog, won her a second Caldecott. In 1943 Gág married Earle Marshall Humphreys. The same year saw more of her fairy tale adaptations in Three Gay Tales from Grimm. Gág was at work on more translations of the Brothers Grimm when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Following a short convalescence in Florida, she returned with Humphreys to her home in New Jersey, and she succumbed to the illness seventeen months later in New York. Her More Tales from Grimm was published posthumously in 1947.