One of the brightest stars of America’s Golden Age of Illustration was Alliance’s own Gertrude Alice Kay.
Best known as a children’s literature illustrator and author who worked in fairy tales and beginner novels, much of Kay’s work was produced inside her studio at her family home located at 133 South Union Avenue. The building, which later served as the Myers-Israel Funeral Home, was razed in 1996 to make way for expansion of the Alliance YMCA.
Kay was born 140 years ago this month on January 30, 1884 in Alliance, the second daughter of Charles Young Kay and Gertrude Cantine Kay. Her parents, born of pioneer Alliance families, supported her creativity as a child and encouraged her to secure an education in the arts.
After graduating from Alliance High School in 1902, she attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and Drexel University, where she studied under Howard Pyle alongside many other prominent female illustrators such as Jessie Wilcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley.
She eventually graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and established her art studio in Alliance, where she remained for the rest of her life – besides occasional travel to Europe and Asia for inspiration – and a career that spanned three decades.
Beginning in 1906, she regularly exhibited her work at various galleries, but her illustrating career began with Down Spider Web Lane, A Fairy Tale, written by Mary Dickerson Donahey in 1909. That was one of nearly two dozen that Kay is known to have illustrated for other authors.
In 1916, Kay published the first of her ten original books in which she authored and illustrated, which include:
- When the Sandman Comes, 1916
- The Book of Seven Wishes, 1917
- The Fairy Who Believed in Human Beings, 1918
- The Jolly Old Shadow Man, 1920
- Helping the Weatherman, 1920
- Adventures in Our Street, 1925
- The Friends of Jimmy, 1926
- Us Kids and the Circus, 1927
- Adventures in Geography, 1930
- Peter, Patter and Pixie, 1931
Kay regularly contributed illustrations to periodicals such as Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s, The American Girl, Good Housekeeping, Everybody’s Magazine, Outlook, and Pictorial Review.
Beginning in 1923, Gertrude created illustrated paper doll inserts for magazines that became quite popular with different themes.
Sadly, Kay’s brush was stilled on December 17, 1939 when she died from injuries suffered in a car accident near Canfield.
Although Kay never had any children, her legacy was carried on through her influence on another Alliance-born children’s author/illustrator – Brinton Turkle.