(1900-1931)

Virginia Frances Sterrett was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1900.  Her father died when she was very young and the family, consisting of her mother, herself, and a sister (Mary Sterrett), moved to Missouri to be closer to other relatives; later moving to Kansas.  Most of her childhood was spend in these two states.

She began to draw as soon as she could hold a pencil and, at the age of two (in 1902), she drew her first picture.  From this point on, most of her waking hours were spent either drawing or dreaming of far-away lands and tales.  Even when she entered grammar school at age of seven, she spent most of her time with pencils and crayons and cared very little for the companionship of other children.

Several years later, the family then traveled from Missouri to Topeka, Kansas, to visit her mother’s sister.  Virginia was encouraged by several friends to enter a few of her drawings in the Kansas State Fair Exhibition.  Even though she had never exhibited nor entered any of her artwork in a contest, she was awarded three first prizes and one second.  This was what she called “one of the encouraging events of my life.”

In the spring of 1915, the Sterrett family returned to Chicago where Virginia attended high school and intended to study art.  After high school, she did some work for the advertising department of a local department store and one of the store executives, impressed with her ability, introduced her at the Art Institute of Chicago.  The management of the school also was sufficiently impressed with her abilities that they admitted her as a student without charging tuition.  Unfortunately, her mother’s health began to fail a mere 14 months later, and Virginia was forced to leave the Institute in order to support the family.  Over the next three years she continued to work in various art advertising agencies in Chicago; but when her own health began to decline, she went to visit her mother’s sister, Mrs. James J. Harmon, in St. Louis in order to rest.  It was a fateful trip – while in St. Louis, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

In 1919 at the age of 19, she was given an opportunity to fulfill her lifelong dream.  She was commissioned by the Penn Publishing Company to illustrate Old French Fairy Tales by Comtesse de Segur.  She completed the pictures – pen and ink drawings and water colors – and received $500 for the work.  After receiving the illustrations, the publishers paid her another $250 for several line drawings for the inside of the front and back covers of the book.  Another illustration job followed in 1921 with Penn Publishing Company again commissioned her to illustrate an edition of Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The favorite stories from Greek mythology gave Sterrett another opportunity to exercise her talent and love for the imagery of fantasy.  

In 1923, the family moved to southern California and settled in Altadena.  Soon afterward, Sterrett became active in the local art scene, but her physical condition had become so bad she had to enter a sanatorium.  She continued to work, but only for short periods at a time.  During this time, she was again commissioned by Penn Publishing Company to illustrate Arabian Nights.  Like the other two books she illustrated, Arabian Nights was a large book with large type, simple stories, and designed to be a gift book for children.  Sterrett provided 16 illustrations in color, 20 in black and white, a colored picture for the front cover and a drawing for the inside of the covers.  This masterpiece took her three years to complete due to her failing health and limited working hours.

The 1928 publishing of Arabian Nights brought a measure of recognition for Sterrett from discriminating art critics, who praised her work and said it had an imaginative conception, grace, and delicacy of execution all its own.  Children and adults alike were captivated by her artwork but were unable to name the artist.  The world at large still did not know her.

Coupled with her professional success, her health began to improve at the sanatorium, and she was told the disease was arrested.  She was able to move into a home with her family and over the next several years (from 1929-1930), she had several local art exhibits at the Little Gallery in Monrovia, California; the Los Angeles County Fair; Painters and Sculptors of Los Angeles, and the California State Fair.

Shortly afterward she undertook another commission from the Penn Publishing Company to illustrate an edition of Myths and Legends.  However, the task was never fulfilled.  She died on June 8, 1931, after a relapse of tuberculosis.  Most of the images for the new book had been completed – if she had been given only a few more months of life, the work would have been finished.

After her death, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a supplement to the Sunday Magazine on July 5, 1931.  The article entitled “The Girl Who Escaped from Life in Her Art,” reprinted several of her illustrations in full color as well as a brief biography of her life.  The last major exhibition of her work was from August 3 - September 2, 1946, when the St. Louis City Art Museum exhibited 54 original illustrations, drawings and water colors, and a self-portrait in oil (the only artwork complete in this medium).