King, Jessie M. A most successful illustrator and designer of book-covers, who was educated as an artist in the Glasgow School of Decorative Art. In this school and at that of South Kensington she was considered a failure, by reason of her utterly unacademic manner. She did not see things by rule and she persistently represented them as she saw them. Her love of nature is intense, and when she illustrated the "Jungle Book" she could more easily imagine that the animals could speak a language that Mowgli could understand, than an academic artist could bring himself to fancy for a moment. Her work is full of poetic imagination, of symbolism, and of the spirit of her subject.
Walter P. Watson, in a comprehensive critique of her work, says: "Her imaginations are more perfect and more minutely organized than what is seen by the bodily eye, and she does not permit the outward creation to be a hindrance to the expression of her artistic creed. The force of representation plants her imagined figures before her; she treats them as real, and talks to them as if they were bodily there; puts words in their mouths such as they should have spoken, and is affected by them as by persons. Such creation is poetry in the literal sense of the term, and Miss King's dreamy and poetical nature enables her to create the persons of the drama, to invest them with appropriate figures, faces, costumes, and surroundings; to make them speak after their own characters."
Her important works are in part the illustrations of "The Little Princess," "The Magic Grammar," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "L'Evangile de l'Enfance," "The Romance of the Swan's Nest," etc.
She also makes exquisite designs for book-covers, which have the spirit of the book for which they are made so clearly indicated that they add to the meaning as well as to the beauty of the book.
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Kirchsberg, Ernestine von. Medal at Chicago Exposition, 1893. Born in Verona, 1857. Pupil of Schäffer and Darnaut. This artist has exhibited in Vienna since 1881, and some of her works have been purchased for the royal collection. Her landscapes, both in oil and water-colors, have established her reputation as an excellent artist, and she gains the same happy effects in both mediums. Her picture shown at Chicago was "A Peasant Home in Southern Austria."
Kirschner, Marie. Born at Prague, 1852. Pupil of Adolf Lier in Munich, and Jules Dupré and Alfred Stevens in Paris. In 1883 she travelled in Italy, and has had her studio in Berlin and in Prague. The Rudolfinum at Prague contains her "Village Tulleschitz in Bohemia." She is also, known by many flower pieces and by the "Storm on the Downs of Heyst," "Spring Morning," and a "Scene on the Moldau."
Kitson, Mrs. H. H. Honorable mention, Paris Exposition, 1889; and the same at Paris Salon, 1890; two medals from Massachusetts Charitable Association; and has exhibited in all the principal exhibitions of the United States. Born in Brookline. Pupil of her husband, Henry H. Kitson, and of Dagnan-Bouveret in Paris.
The women of Michigan commissioned Mrs. Kitson to make two bronze statues representing the woods of their State for the Columbian Exhibition at Chicago. Her principal works are the statue of a volunteer for the Soldiers' Monument at Newburyport; Soldiers' Monument at Ashburnham; Massachusetts State Monument to 29th, 35th, and 36th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry at National Military Park at Vicksburg; also medallion portraits of Generals Dodge, Ransom, Logan, Blair, Howard, A. J. Smith, Grierson, and McPherson, for the Sherman Monument at Washington.