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Neysa McMein (1888-1949)

While most recognized commercial artists of her time were male, Neysa McMein excelled as one of the leading and most influential artists. Her professional illustrator's career started with the sale of her first drawing to the Boston Star in 1914, after her attendance at the Art Institute of Chicago and a brief soiree into the field of acting. In 1915 another cover was sold, this time to the Saturday Evening Post. During the lean years, she subsidized her income by doing pastel portraits. They were popular and brought her many commissions.

As her career flourished, Neysa Mc Mein was commissioned to create covers for McClure's, Liberty, Woman's Home Companion, Collier's, and Photoplay and did all covers for McCall's magazine between 1923 and 1937. She also did ad art for various companies such as Palmolive soap and Lucky Strike cigarettes. McMein is responsible for "inventing" the image of Betty Crocker, that vision of a fictional housewife that ended up portraying the wholesome likeness of American women. Few other images have done more to nurture strong middle-class, moral domestic values.

Mc Mein was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group begun in 1919. It included some of the most talented writers, journalists and artists in New York City. The Round Table then included: Edna Ferber, Irving Berlin, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Harpo Marks, Jascha Heifetz and others. They met daily for lunch at a large round table in the Algonquin Hotel, thus the name, and were recognized during the 1920's for their spirit and urbane sophistication. Mc Mein's own studio, at the time located on West 57th Street, was also a meeting place for these same artisans. The Round Table survived until 1943.

Always of an unorthodox style, Neysa started out life as Margery Edna McMein but changed her name to Neysa Mc Mein and credited the change with her rapid success. At 35, she decided to reject single life and married. It was a most unusual arrangement in which neither party was held to the usual formalities and restrictions. Her husband was a mining engineer and author and traveled extensively, while she continued her illustrating career in New York City.

McMein's personal artistic ambitions always remained in the field of portraiture. As the popularity of her style of illustration declined in the late 1930's, she turned more fervently to portrait work. Subjects of her portraits included Presidents Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover, actress Helen Hayes, actor Charlie Chaplin, the famous Count Ferdinand Zeppelin, who had allowed Mc Mein to be one of the first women to fly in his dirigible, and many more.

As an illustrator and artist, Neysa Mc Mein will always be remembered for her originality and chic style. She enjoyed a long and successful career, spending nearly her entire life in New York City, where she died in 1949.

Copyright ARTtalk Vol. 11 No. 10 -- August 2001