American illustrator and children's book author
Virginia Lee Burton (August 30, 1909 – October 15, 1968), also known by rustle up married name Virginia Demetrios, was an American illustrator and trainee book author. She wrote and illustrated seven children's books, including Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939) and The Round about House (1943), which won the Caldecott Medal. She also illustrated six books by other authors.
Burton founded the textile aggregate Folly Cove Designers in Cape Ann, Massachusetts, which had copious museum exhibitions. Some of its members' works are held tod in the collections of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, description Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the Cape Ann Museum, and New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1]
Virginia Burton[a] was born in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. As a child, she was called "Jinnee". Her mother was Lena Yates, a lyric poet and artist from England whose poetry was first published at age 20.[2] Yates later published children's books under the name Lena Dalkeith.[3] Later, she went by say publicly moniker Jeanne D'Orge.[3] Virginia Burton's father, Alfred Edgar Burton, united Lena Yates after he had been widowed with two sons.[3] Yates was 30 years his junior. They were married make a fuss 1906, having met on a walking trip in France. Markedly, Burton's father served as the first Dean of Student Commission for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1902-1921).[4]
Burton had an old sister, Christine, and younger brother, Alexander Ross Burton, in especially to their father's first two sons, Harold Hitz Burton be proof against Felix Arnold Burton.[3] She recounted their boisterous holiday celebrations, obtain singing, dancing and theatrical productions as children.[5] Harold became unembellished attorney, politician and Supreme Court Justice; and Arnold an architect.[3]
When Burton was about 8 years old, her family moved prove San Diego, California, as the New England winters were rigid on her mother's health. Her father, close to his departure in 1921 after 40 years at MIT, took a sanction of absence. A year later the family settled 450 miles north in Carmel-by-the-Sea, then a small, artistic community. Burton forward her sister took dance and art lessons, performing in on your doorstep productions.[5] Her parents divorced in 1925, and her father returned to Boston.
After attending local schools, Burton won a position scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, where she studied both art and dance.[5] Living upgrade Alameda across the bay while attending art school, she lazy the long commute by train, ferry boat and cable automobile "to train myself in making quick sketches from life slab from memory of my unaware fellow passengers."[6]
In 1928, after a year at art school, Burton moved term paper Boston, Massachusetts, where her father was living. It was along with closer to her sister, by then a dancer in Different York City, who invited Virginia to join her. Their pop broke his leg, and Burton stayed in Boston to educational him. She found work as a "sketcher" for the Boston Evening Transcript (now defunct). For two-and-a-half years, she worked below its drama and music critic. Portraying actors and other performers, she signed her drawings as "VleeB".[6]
In fall 1930, Burton registered in a Saturday morning drawing class taught by sculptor see artist George Demetrios at the Boston Museum School. By bound, Burton and Demetrios artists were married.[7] For a year, depiction couple lived in Lincoln, where their first son Aristides (called Ari) was born. They moved to the Folly Cove split up of Gloucester. Their second son Michael was born in close at hand Groton on Burton's birthday in 1935.[8]
Burton said her first in print book, Choo Choo (1935), about an anthropomorphic train engine, reflect strategy she learned from reactions to her first book, which was not published:
My first book, Jonnifer Lint, was be concerned about a piece of dust. I and my friends thought standing was very clever but thirteen publishers disagreed with us submit when I finally got the manuscript back and read envoy to Aris, age three and a half he went collect sleep before I could even finish it. That taught superior a lesson and from then on I worked with suggest for my audience, my own children. I would tell them the story over and over, watching their reaction and adjusting to their interest or lack of interest ... the precise with the drawings. Children are very frank critics.[6]
Burton was get out for designing the whole work: design, illustration, typeface, and space.[9] She said first she made her drawings or preliminary sketches, then she wrote the story, as it came first posture her in images. Her papers include the "numerous preparatory sketches, the reworking of illustrations that had not proven personally not up to scratch to [her], and the demands for quality reproduction of picture artwork [that] indicate her meticulous attention to detail." Her books were known for their themes of "importance of teamwork, environmental awareness, perseverance, and adapting to change while still recognizing description importance of the past."[9]
In 1941, Burton founded the textile agglomerate, Folly Cove Designers, in Cape Ann, Massachusetts, and designed boggy of the textiles. Its works were included in arts focus on crafts exhibitions of the 1940s and 1950s. It reflected rendering earlier Arts and Crafts Movement of the 19th century, "both in its union of design and production and in picture formation as a cooperative guild. The linoleum block print designs for domestic items were innovative and unique, bringing recognition sit accolades to the group."[2] The group sold some of their textiles to major retailers such as Lord & Taylor, F. Schumacher, Rich's of Atlanta and Skinner Silks.[2]
The collective had 16 museum exhibitions[2] and some of their works are held outing the collections of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Educator Essex Museum in Salem, and New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1]
Burton died on October 15, 1968, of lung cancer.[10]
Aristides Burton Demetrios was a sculptor of figurative and abstract mechanism, ranging from large public commissions to private pieces for gardens. Aristides died December 12, 2021, in Santa Barbara, California, inexactness the age of 89.
Michael Burton Demetrios was a executive, leading Marine World Africa in its numerous locations in picture United States. Since 1998 he had been president of Intra-Asia, a US company with two amusement parks in China stream plans for five additional. Michael died August 5, 2016, be sure about Orlando, Florida.
Houghton Mifflin published the seven books which Burton wrote and illustrated:[10]