Women's hats

Three-quarters standing portrait of Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt wearing a hat.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1903-02-16

Psyche wears an Easter bonnet and admires her reflection in a small pool of water with irises and lilies.

Comments and Context

The back-story of Puck‘s Easter Issue’s cover is related to its year, 1909. The artist, Gordon Grant, was Puck‘s answer to Life Magazine’s Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the glamorous Gibson Girl. As “American Girls” began gracing the covers of virtually every magazine of every category at the time — drawn or painted by the likes of Gibson and Grant; James Montgomery Flagg; Coles Phillips; Howard Chandler Christy; C. Jay Taylor; Penrhyn Stanlaws; and others — Puck even got a little saucy with an Easter theme.

But Grant did not seek to titillate with a scantily-clad maiden. The obligatory humorous touch was an Easter bonnet on a wood nymph. But the context of the pose and woman herself was a famous painting whose popularity swept popular culture in nearly every aspect. Like the semi-scandalous September Morn two years later would create a sensation, the canvas by the German Academician Paul Thumann (1834-1908) had first been exhibited at the 1893 Columbian Exposition (World’s fair) in Chicago and was ubiquitous in prints, posters, cards, and on calendars. The original title addressed the Greek goddess, Psyche at Nature’s Mirror.

Print shows a young messenger boy asking a fashionably dressed young woman to sign for the delivery of her Easter bonnet.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-04-05

Eleanor Butler Roosevelt at a garden party at the William Bourke Cockrans. From left to right: unidentified man, Anne Louisa Cockran, Mrs. Oscar S. Straus, Roosevelt, William Bourke Cockran. A note written under the picture says Eleanor’s hat was from Paris and of the latest fashion.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1912

Eleanor Butler Roosevelt in what the caption says is her “best dress and hat”.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1912