Born in Hoxton in suburban North London, Kate came from an artistic family and inherited her talent from her gifted parents. Her father John Greenaway was a draftsman and wood engraver, and her mother Elizabeth was an accomplished seamstress. Money was tight in the Greenaway family so Elizabeth opened a children's clothes shop, later expanding into millinery, underwear and women's clothing.
Kate used to enjoy spending her childhood summers in Nottinghamshire, with relatives. She liked the neat, tidy gardens there and acquired her love for flowers.1
Kate studied art at the famous Slade School in London, which, unusually for those days, accepted both sexes for tuition. Here she was taught by Allphonse Legros.
Her first employment was designing greeting cards for Messrs Marcus Ward, whom she left after six years 'because he refused to return her original drawings for publication'.2
John Greenaway introduced young Kate to the colour printer Edmund Evans with whom she produced a number of children's books, including Mother Goose. Her books were enormously successful and she was able to buy a house and studio with a garden in the delightful suburb of Hampstead, where she lived with her father.
Kate's career leapt from success to success until she came under the influence of John Ruskin, the noted art critic. He encouraged her to paint watercolours and do figure drawings, but although her works were widely praised, she was better at the children's illustrations.
Other admirers of Kate's illustrations included Paul Gaugain, Ernest Chesneau and Richard Muther.
Upset by her father and Ruskin's deaths, and the fact that her success was declining (her last books didn't sell well) Kate became 'increasingly tired and depressed'3 during her last years.
She died at a young age of breast cancer.
Kate created a whole new world for children. She wrote that: "Children like something that excites their imagination - a very real thing mixed up with a great unreality like Blue Beard".
1 Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) http://homepage.fognetworks.net/tortakal...
2 Ibid., p.2
3 Ibid.,p.7
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