Pamela Bianco

Pamela Bianco (December 31, 1906 – 1994) was a British-born American painter, illustrator, and writer, who came to fame as a child prodigy in the 1910s.^[1]

Pamela Ruby Bianco was born on New Year's Eve in the Barnes district of London, the daughter of an Italian scholar and bookseller, Francesco Bianco,^[2] and an English writer, Margery Williams Bianco (author of The Velveteen Rabbit).^[1] She was educated at home, though home for the Biancos was a shifting location, as the family lived in France, Italy, and the United States when Pamela was a child.^[3]

Her paintings and drawings were first exhibited as part of a children's show in Turin,^[3] then in London in 1918,^[3][4] and in New York City in 1921.^[3][5] After shows in several American cities, she returned to New York City for a more mature show when she was seventeen years old, at the Knoedler Gallery.^[6] Among her early patrons were John Galsworthy, Walter de la Mare, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Nina Wilcox Putnam, and Jo Davidson.^[7][8]

Bianco continued to exhibit her works into her twenties, in New York City and elsewhere.^[9]

After Bianco had an exhibit at Leicester Galleries in London in 1919, Walter de la Mare wrote some poems to accompany her drawing which was published as Flora: A Book of Drawings by William Heinemann the same year.^[3][10][11] In 1928 a children's edition of poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence, selected and illustrated by Bianco, was published.^[12][13][14]

In her adult career, she wrote and illustrated children's literature, and continued to exhibit her art. Books written and illustrated by Bianco include The Starlit Journey: A Story (1933)^[15][16] and Playtime in Cherry Street (1948).^[17][18] Books illustrated by Bianco include Oscar Wilde's The Birthday of the Infanta (1929),^[19] Glenway Wescott's Natives of Rock (1925),^[20][21] and Hazeltine and Smith's The Easter Book of Legends and Stories (1947).^[22][23] She also illustrated several books by her mother, including The Skin Horse,^[24] The Adventures of Andy, and The Little Wooden Doll.^[25]

Bianco received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1930.^[26]

Bianco married twice. Her first husband was Robert Schlick;^[27] they married in 1930 and divorced in 1955. She remarried in 1955 to fellow artist George Theodore Hartmann; he died in 1976. She had one son, Lorenzo Bianco Schlick, who became a dancer best known for appearing in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway and in the film version. Larry Bianco (as he was known professionally) died in April 1994,^[28] and Bianco died later that same year, at the age of 88.^[3]

A retrospective exhibition of Bianco's works was mounted in 2004 in London at England & Co Gallery and an exhibition catalogue published.^[29][30] A small collection of her papers, mostly illustrations, are at the University of Minnesota.^[31]

In 2017 Laurel Davis Huber published The Velveteen Daughter: A Novel based on the life of Bianco.^[3][27][32]

Works by Bianco are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago,^[33] the Museum of Modern Art,^[34] the Brooklyn Museum,^[35] the Whitney Museum of Art,^[36] and the Carnegie Museum of Art,^[37] among other institutions and private collections.