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• Rose O’Neill |
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Form emerging from the formless...
“There are some people who have found some of my pictures revolting. They hurt the eye. But I am not dejected — like Poe. I am in love with magic and monsters and the drama of form emerging from the formless.” — Rose O’Neill
“There are some people who have found some of my pictures revolting. They hurt the eye. But I am not dejected — like Poe. I am in love with magic and monsters and the drama of form emerging from the formless.” — Rose O’Neill
The Sweetest of Monsters
by Joshua Heston
Rose O’Neill’s serious work defies opinion, trend, generation. The art is provocative, delicate, emotional, and often risqué. It is unflinching.
O’Neill was a gifted illustrator before she developed a now-nearly forgotten doll (the Kewpie) which, in terms of merchandising, was eclipsed only by the work of another Missouri artist (Walt Disney).
Kewpies were the highest expression of O’Neill’s commercial, illustrative abilities. It was a commercial peak following years of drawing for the greatest magazines of the Western publishing world. Kewpies were not, however, her highest expression of art.
After a visit with aging French sculptor Auguste Rodîn, O’Neill was encouraged — perhaps demanded — to bring her private works to light. The Sweet Monster collection was never meant to be seen. “From a long practice of hiding what I was most loving to make, I had grown extremely shy. And I must confess I dreaded exposure,’” she wrote. The collection series met great success in a 1921 Paris gallery exhibition.
“In viewing the powerful drawings of Madame Rose O’Neill one would hardly be surprised to learn that this strange and profound artiste is also a great poet. Her melodious and nostalgic verses are at the same time an emanation of, and a stimulant to, her plastic feeling,” wrote Monsieur Arène Alexandre.
New York art-goers were not so kind the next year. American audiences were unprepared for the “Mother of the Kewpie” to be so liberated or so capable of drawing sensuous, enigmatic figures. In time, the artwork languished, largely forgotten.
It has been nearly a century since the serious artwork of Rose O’Neill was placed before a larger audience for debate and appreciation.
“The world’s greatest illustrator,” said Thomas Hart Benton of O’Neill. It may well be true.
The Galleryon StateoftheOzarks...
“Besieging the Lips of Earth”
Earth, a great man-like figure appearing as of stone, nuzzles Mankind.
It is a common theme for O’Neill (the interaction of man and nature) and she pulls great pathos and compassion from simple lines and curves.
Look closely at the figures. Man, who is tenderly leaning upward, mouth open, anticipates a kiss.
Plate 3
“Man in the Hand of Nature”
Mankind, represented by the solitary figure, awaits in the hand of Nature, a stately faunness-like creature.
Many of O’Neill’s “monsters” show similar qualities: a beautiful, even perfect, human body stylized with wide lips, a powerful, sloping forehead, oft-closed eyes, and tubular, malleable hair, resembling a mass of horns.
These “monsters” exude a purposeful calm.
“Man in the Hand of Nature”
Mankind, represented by the solitary figure, awaits in the hand of Nature, a stately faunness-like creature.
Many of O’Neill’s “monsters” show similar qualities: a beautiful, even perfect, human body stylized with wide lips, a powerful, sloping forehead, oft-closed eyes, and tubular, malleable hair, resembling a mass of horns.
These “monsters” exude a purposeful calm.
“Man and the Earth”
The theme, a reprise or continuation of Besieging the Lips of Earth, further develops into a tender, sensous relationship. Earth consoles Man in a strong, loving embrace. The eyes are again closed.
Note the similarities of form between Earth (Plate 4) and Nature (Plate 3) although Earth is masculine (often rising from stone) while Nature is feminine, with animal-like attributes (hooves and sometimes horns).
“Man Reposes at the Feet of His Soul”
Shown here in two parts (Plates 5 & 6) , the Soul is again massive, Earth-like. A figure resting, thoughtfully, on the clouds.
Diminutive Man (Plate 6), again naked, sleeps at his soul’s feet.
One of the more prominent works of the Paris exhibit, the image is considered a masterpiece of form. “The soul is still a rude achievement of the earth, uncouth, but a giant,’ explained O’Neill, “[L]ike some poor Titan leaning on the sky.”
“The Centaur Escapes”
Plate 1 (at the top of the Gallery) displays an enraged centaur, half-man and half-horse — muscular back arched, fists clenched — against a troubled sky.
From whom is he escaping? What cause is there of this angst? O’Neill, wisely, leaves that answer to the viewer — or, perhaps more personally, simply kept the answer to herself.
Conclusion
Although the Sweet Monster Collection — which may be viewed in great detail at the Bonniebrook Historical Society and Museum on the grounds of Rose O’Neill’s beloved Ozark mansion just north of present-day Branson — leaves us with many questions, the collection also gives some important answers.
Rose O’Neill was a beautiful, if melancholy, soul. Enormously talented, she was, for a time, one of the richest women in the world. But riches could not insulate her from great loss.
She would twice marry and twice divorce. There is remarkable sensuality to her work, proving her understanding — and deep appreciation, perhaps longing — of the human form, both male and female. There is loneliness, tempered with contemplation.
Rose’s young brother, Jamie, died, quickly and unexpectedly, after helping an ill — and contagious — woman on the train between St. Louis and Springfield, Missouri. His death nearly broke her heart. In her art and poetry, there are corresponding periods of deep sadness.
The native Ozark mountains are evoked in her art. Look closely and you can see shadows of great limestone and dolomite bluffs — old glades dark with cedar and forbidding. Lines flow across O’Neill’s paper like old Bear Creek flows across the stone at the foot of Bonniebrook.
Rose O’Neill grew up immersed in the Greek mythology of a classic, late-19th-century education and the Celtic legends from her first-generation Irish father.
Both would find form in her art. Both would give art critics a reason to cry Paganism! regarding her illustrations. But that imprecation was often used lovingly, even at the turn of the 20th century, regarding O’Neill’s Sweet Monsters.
Still, it is striking how modern the illlustrations are — how full of emotion yet devoid of sentimentality.
“The buffoonery of the Kewpies and the passion of my serious drawings playing side by side is unusual,” wrote O’Neill, “But not too unusual. In this droll existence, the Hamlet and Lear have always consorted with the clown.”
Credits
All artwork is courtesy of the Bonniebrook Historical Society and Museum.
StateoftheOzarks gratefully notes the allowance — for the first time — of extensive digital prints to be made of the O’Neill Sweet Monster Collection for an independent online gallery viewing.
Particular thanks go to Susan Scott and Martha Melton for their extensive research and hard work in preserving Rose O’Neill artwork.
Digital print management for StateoftheOzarks: J. Heston.
The Sweetest of Monsters art plates
Plate 1, The Centaur Escapes Plate 2, Besieging the Lips of Earth, Plate 3, Man In the Hand of Nature, Plate 4, Man and the Earth, Plate 5 & 6, Man Reposes at the Feet of His Soul. All work courtesy of the Bonniebrook Historical Society and Museum.
(a short note)
Written for O’Neill’s brother, Jamie: The Ballad of a Dead Boy is a chronicle of incomprehension in the face of great loss — and contemplation of the perceived consciousness of the dead:
They wait until you have forgot / Until the moon is drowned...
JAMIE
The Ballad of a Dead Boy
And that was he that died last night!
Did no one hear a sound?
The dead they die so stealthily
When you have turned around.
They wait until you have forgot,
Until the moon is drowned.
To die it is a secret thing—
The closing of a book—
The furtive dead they are ashamed,
The dead that are forsook;
So death it is a secret thing,
And never man must look.
Perhaps, they know what we will do,
And why we dig the snow;
They’d rather be in their own beds,
Than to be used so.
And thus they die so carefully,
And hope we shall not know....
— by Rose O’Neill
(from the book The Master-Mistress, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1922)
The serious artwork of Rose O’Neill is best appreciated alongside her written work. But did you ever wonder what the Irish soul looks like?
It is playful, contemplative, melancholy. Deeply thoughtful, almost driven to seeing the perspective of other, it can be summed up thus:
Laugh today as it’s better than to cry.
(another note)
I Left My Pipes details the misplaced effort of battle — and the horror of result. O’Neill was a gifted word-smith.
Her verse is simple. Consequently, it is powerful.
I LEFT MY PIPES
“And I will slay, and I’ll be slain,
If needs must be to keep
The happy woods for dreamers fain
Where fauns and dryads sleep.”
I left my pipes and pipers fair,
Farewelled each leafy wight;
And fierce upon the foemen there,
I drove into the fight.
I thrust one through his spreading breast,
I broke one at the knee,
I clove another’s curling crest
And throat of ivory.
One died in weeping, like a child,
One like a stag that cries,
And one with looks so brightly wild,
Was like a god that dies.
Mine was the battle, and by me
Were saved my grove and plain:
I turned me once about to see
The faces of the slain.
Oh, golden fall that flowered the lawns!
Oh, honied mouths that bled!
They were the faces of my fauns,
And dryads, that were dead.
— by Rose O’Neill
(from the book The Master-Mistress, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1922)
(one last note)
What was it like to be a celebrated woman in a male-dominated world, surviving by sheer talent and near-Elizabethan wit?
In this classic piece of Irish soul, you can almost hear her laughing as she cries.
THE WOMAN OF PROPERTY
Irish Song
Do you think at this day you can call me and keep me,
You that was good to me once and no more?
And you that was bad to me, now you can weep me,
Weep as you laughed with your laughing before.
I am the wind-flower, long winds they sweep me—
I am the corn, and the reaper can reap me,
I am the clay, with the young roots to lover me,
I’ve got me own grass, and plenty to cover me.
— by Rose O’Neill
(from the book The Master-Mistress, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1922)