This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Ellen Harriet Clapsaddle (1865-1934)
She is a widely collected American postcard artist. Between 1870-1920 she completed some 4000 images of children of the Victorian era. She published these watercolor images as postcards in her own four color printing plant in Berlin, Germany that she owned jointly with two New York City publishers, the Wolf Brothers. From 1905-1917 her printing plant produced over 1/2 billion postcards in color. These are collected worldwide.
Ellen grew up in the Town of Columbia, New York, graduated from the Richfield Spa, N.Y. Academy, and Cooper-Union Art School in NYC. She is credited with humanizing Santa Claus by putting red cheeks, a white beard and smile on the mean old German Christmas Symbol Kris Kringle. Ellen also designed and painted the first"snow babies" in the late 1890's.
She is buried in Richfield Springs, New York with her parents. Most of her original watercolors were destroyed in 1917 when her printing plant was bombed and destroyed during WWI. She lost everything and the post card era came to an end as the war ended.
Information provided by the artist's cousin, Jim Parker. |
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