Pamela Colman Smith never became well-known as an artist and, without the Tarot deck she illustrated, she may have fallen into total obscurity. Stuart Kaplan, president of U.S. Games, Inc. says he could have made her a millionaire. Caroline Wise tells the story of seeing a painting by Smith in a Christi’s catalog and, on a whim, putting in a very low bid. It turned out she was the only one to bother. It was one of Smith’s paintings done while listening to Debussy play his own compositions.
The only comment from Pixie Smith about the creation of the tarot deck was in a letter to her mentor Alfred Stieglitz (click on the letter to see a larger version).
You can see much of the artwork of Pamela Colman Smith at these sites (thanks especially to Roppo and Holly Voley for their efforts to make Pixie’s work available to the rest of us):
• The Works of Pamela Colman Smith – page 1
• The Works of Pamela Colman Smith – page 2
• A Portrait of William Butler Yeats by PCS
• The Shakespeare’s Heroines Poster
• A Variety of Works by Pamela Colman Smith from Holly Voley’s site
Including my own copy of her book Chim-Chim: Folk Stories from Jamaica
• Tales for Philip and Peter, illustrated by PCS
• The Pamela Colman Smith Collection at Bryn Mawr
• Paintings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library – search on Pamela+Smith, and while you are there, see their collection of 15th century Tarot cards by searching on Tarot.
• K. Frank Jensen’s Waite-Smith Tarot Research
• Pixie’s very own MySpace page where you can become her friend! Includes lots of her drawings and the music that inspired her.
You can order the illustrated The Story of the Waite-Smith Tarot by K. Frank Jensen – here.
Articles by and about PCS can be found by searching The Craftsman – here (search on her name).
Let me know if I’ve missed anything and I’ll add it to the above list.
Mary K. Greer has made tarot her life work. Check here for reports of goings-on in the tarot world, articles on the history and practice of tarot, and reviews.
4 comments
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April 17, 2008 at 8:08 am
Craig Conley
Pamela’s letter to her mentor is heartbreaking. An artist of such vision and talent, yet so destitute and desperate, crying out for money she had already earned but never been paid! Of course, hers was and is a common predicament in the world of artists (or, I should say, for the artists of the world).
April 17, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Tania
There is mention of 80 designs! I wonder what the other 2 pieces were?!!!
Love the blog by the way! Fantastic.
April 18, 2008 at 12:49 am
marygreer
Craig –
The attitude in that day was that women in professions were taking employment away from men who needed to support their families. There was a serious, though unacknowledged, surplus of ’spinsters,’ and no one knew what to do with them. Stieglitz’s own attitude seemed to be that it was crass to discuss money—of course he had enough to think so.
Tania –
One of the designs would have been that for the back of the card—alternating roses and lilies like what appears on the so-called “Original Waite” edition (the faces were taken from a later printing known as Pamela C). Pamela may also have created a title or info card that was never used. Decks are printed on large sheets that are later cut apart, so there is actually room for 80 cards. Alignment of a back-design with borders becomes difficult and so the roses-and-lilies back has rarely been used. The blue plaid (taroteé) design one usually sees is not so finicky in printing alignment, it doesn’t reveal reversals, and it doesn’t show scuff marks and scratches. Some of the earliest decks have what’s been called a “brown pebble” back. You can see a collection of card backs here.
Mary
May 28, 2009 at 9:26 am
Richard Davis McLeod
I notice that the nickname given Pamela Colman Smith by Ellen Terry, “Pixie” is being used more and more today by writers when in reference to PCS rather than her given name.
I wonder if this was a nickname she either “liked” or “just put up with”. I say this because information indicates that people oftentimes did not take her seriously as she appeared “childlike”. I know that just because a person appears “childlike”, the person is not necessarily an adult also, but rather such individuals are just fortunate enough in addition to having become an adult, also fortunate enough to maintain a sense of “childlike” innocence.
In Smith’s poem “Alone”, her feelings about her association with other people definitely gave her the feeling that she was really never taken seriously by the fellow adults with whom she worked. She apparently never had any further associations, with those influential adults from Steiglitz to Ellen Terry who gave her the nickname of “Pixie” years earlier when PCS was desperately trying to establish herself as a serious artist.
I don’t ever notice PCS being referred to as “Pixie” in any references of her later life, after leaving the art world she worked with until her conversion to Catholicism around 1913. Her later associations were primarily with the small Catholic community that attended the Masses held at the Chapel she had built in her home, named, “Our Lady of the Lizard”. There is one reference where she ran from the presence of William Butler Yeats, but that has never been explained as to what the complete situation was really all about that day in her life.
I know how undesirable nicknames, regardless of how “cute” they may seem, are not a welcome attribute to the beneficiary. Any ideas from fellow readers on just what PCS really thought of the nickname “Pixie”, and was that nickname a possible insight as to why she was never really taken seriously in the Art World and her retreat to her own world at her home in England with a private Catholic Chapel for last 35 years of her life? Richard McLeod