The Postcard
A Valentine's Attwell Series postcard featuring artwork by Mabel Lucie Attwell.
The card was posted in Tenterden Kent on Tuesday the 5th. October 1926 to:
Mrs. H. J. Jempson,
1, Riggindale Road,
Streatham,
London.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"To Big Sister,
Mummy smacked me last
night in the bathroom
because I won't leave Jings
alone, still I try to be good,
but my fingers won't let me.
Lots of love from Spot & me.
He loves me lots. x"
Valentine’s Co. Ltd. (Valentine & Sons)
Valentine & Sons were a major postcard publisher of Dundee and London. The Valentine Company, a lithographic printing firm, was founded in 1825 in Dundee, Scotland by John Valentine.
His son James became an early pioneer of photography, and by the 1860’s his work was being reproduced by the Valentine Company as prints and stereo-views.
After James’ death in 1879, his two sons, George Dobson and William Dobson took over the Company, but in 1884 George moved to New Zealand where he became a landscape photographer.
In 1880 Valentine began producing Christmas cards, and by 1896 they began printing postcards. Up until 1882 they had only published views of Scotland, but they began expanding into other tourist markets.
Other offices opened in Jamaica, Madeira, Norway, Tangier, Canada, and New York. They produced a great range of view-cards that were mostly printed in Scotland in tinted halftone lithography or issued as real photo cards.
In addition they produced a vast array of other products that held photographic images. All interests outside of Great Britain were sold in 1923. By 1929 they had given up their photo portraiture work to concentrate solely on postcard production.
However they did not anticipate the public’s growing demand for colour cards, and by the 1950’s their business was suffering. In response they put most of their efforts into greetings cards.
They were purchased by John Waddington & Co. in 1963, which passed on to Hallmark Cards in 1980. Dundee operations closed in 1994.
Mabel Lucie Attwell
Mabel Lucie Attwell was a British illustrator and comics artist. She is known for her cute, nostalgic drawings of children, inspired by her daughter. Her drawings are featured on many postcards, advertisements, posters, books and figurines.
Mabel Lucie Attwell - The Early Years
Mabel was born on the 4th. June 1879 in Mile End, London, the sixth child of butcher Augustus Attwell and his wife Emily Ann.
She studied at Saint Martin's School of Art, but left to develop her own interest in imaginary subjects, disliking the emphasis on still-life drawing and classical subjects.
After Mabel sold work to the Tatler and Bystander, she was taken on by the agents Francis and Mills, leading to a long and consistently successful career.
In 1908, she married painter and illustrator Harold Cecil Earnshaw (d. 1937) with whom she had a daughter, Marjorie, and two sons.
Attwell's initial career was founded on magazine illustration, which she continued throughout her life, but around 1900 she began receiving commissions for book illustrations.
Mabel illustrated children's classics such as Mother Goose (1910) and Alice in Wonderland (1911).
During the 1910's Attwell produced a number of posters for London Transport featuring children to promote travel to Christmas pantomimes and other events.
Mabel Lucie Attwell - The Later Years
From 1914 onwards, Mabel developed her trademark style of sentimentalised rotund cuddly infants, which became ubiquitous across a wide range of markets. These included cards, calendars, nursery equipment and pictures, crockery and dolls.
Mabel illustrated Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1914), The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley (1915), and an edition of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan and Wendy.
Shelley Potteries
In 1926 Shelley Potteries commissioned Attwell to produce designs for children's china ware. Attwell’s first six designs portrayed scenes involving children, animals and small green elves in green suits – these were called 'Boo Boos' and were featured on cups, mugs, bowls etc.
Death of Mabel Lucie Attwell
Mabel died at her home in Fowey, Cornwall on the 5th. November 1964, after which her business was carried on by her daughter.
The Lucie Attwell Annual, which was first published in 1922, continued to be published for a further ten years ten years after Mabel's death. This was made possible by extensive re-use of earlier images.
Dorothy Tennant
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 5th. October 1926 was not a good day for Dorothy Tennant, because she died at the age of 71 on that day.
Dorothy, who was born in London on the 22nd. March 1855, was an English painter of the Victorian era neoclassicism.
Biography of Dorothy Tennant
Tennant was born in Russell Square, London, the second daughter of Charles Tennant and Gertrude Barbara Rich Collier (1819–1918).
Her sister was the photographer, Eveleen Tennant Myers.
Dorothy studied painting under Edward Poynter at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, and with Jean-Jacques Henner in Paris.
She first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886, and subsequently at the New Gallery and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. Outside of London Tennant featured in exhibitions by the Fine Art Society in Glasgow, and also in the Autumn Exhibitions held in Liverpool and Manchester.
In 1890, she married the explorer of Africa, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, and became known as Lady Stanley. She edited her husband's autobiography, reportedly removing any references to other women in Stanley's life.
After Stanley's death, she married, in 1907, Henry Jones Curtis, a pathologist, surgeon and writer. Henry died on the 19th. February 1944.
Dorothy was also an author, and illustrated several books, including London Street Arabs in 1890.
