13 things I learned from Wanda Gág

You may have heard of Wanda Gág’s famous book Millions of Cats, the oldest picture book that has never gone out of print—it was published in 1928.

But you might not know that, after her father died when she was 15 years old, she vowed to ensure all six of her younger siblings completed high school—and paid for it from her art alone. (That would be hard NOW let alone as a female artist in the 1920s)

Or that, in addition to being a successful children’s book author and illustrator, she was internationally-known for her prints of everyday objects, nature, and buildings.

Or that she kept extensive journals detailing her experience of being a female artist with unconventional views about marriage, motherhood, relationships, and creativity.

You’ll probably appreciate this post if you:

Need a reminder to trust your own creative voice.
Are seeking inspiration or the permission to experiment.
Have felt the struggles of:
- Honoring your creative voice while also making money
- Balancing learning from others and going your own way
- Prioritizing your work while also cultivating relationships

Let’s see what we can learn from the great Wanda Gág.

1. Lean into your childhood influences. They are a huge part of your unique creative voice.

Wanda Hazel Gág was born March 11, 1893 in New Ulm, Minnesota—a small town settled by Middle Europeans full of old world customs and legends which heavily influenced her work. Some of her early influences include folklore, Bohemian folk songs, zither music, German fairytales, and the illustrated works of Goethe, Schiller, and Heine.

From a young age, she knew she wanted to be an artist.

I spent my earliest years in the serene belief that drawing and painting, like eating and sleeping, belonged to the universal and inevitable things of life.

Her parents Anton and Elizabeth (Lissi) were immigrants from Bohemia and Germany. Anton was a local photographer, painter, and decorator for homes and churches. Lissi acted as an art director in the studio, posing subjects and editing photos. They encouraged all seven of their children to draw, explore music, and play dress-up. During dinner, the family often drew together, and Gág especially excelled at writing and illustrating her own stories.

Her father’s studio was a huge place of inspiration. She watched him paint every Sunday and loved “the silent serious happiness in the air.” He would teach her about composition, color, and other techniques.

But then, in 1908, when she was only 15 years old, her father passed away from occupational tuberculosis. Wanda was the oldest and his last words to her were, “What Papa couldn’t do, Wanda will have to finish.”

Her father became on of the biggest foundations for all her motivations and dreams.

All my life I have wished there were some way of getting across to my father some of the sympathy and appreciation which was denied him in his lifetime. All I could think of doing was to fulfill his wish… to the best of my ability, hoping that in some way it would even things up.

She always kept a note from him on her desk suggesting "diligent observation, study, and practice.” He counseled, “An artist . . . whatever he does and produces, must always observe and gather and retain new impressions, teach himself and let himself be taught, and success will not be lacking.”

Her life motto also came from him: draw to live, live to draw.

2. Don’t let others pressure you to live your life against your own values. You must “belong to yourself.”

After her father passed away, her mother struggled with her health. The community pressured her to quit school and get a job to support her family. She felt judged for her family’s poverty, for drawing too much and for her desire to complete high school.

How much did I belong to myself? To what extent had I the right to ignore myself—not the physical part that walked around and worked, but that fiery thing inside which was always trying to get out and which made me draw so furiously?

It was a difficult time for all of them, “a jumble of housework, hungry children, endless woodchopping…and adolescent sentimental moods and a yearning for oysters and butter….there was rarely enough food.”

But she refused to quit, and instead committed to helping all of her siblings through high school by selling her stories and drawings to magazines and patrons. By her freshman year, she had published many original drawings and stories in the Junior Journal and made $100+ from her art.

3. Let people help you. It takes a community to overcome the personal and financial barriers to your dreams.

After Gág graduated from high school, she supported her family by teaching at a rural school for one year. But deep down she knew she wanted to be an artist. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the money to continue her schooling while also supporting her family.

But she kept making and submitting work, and eventually multiple patrons offered to pay for her school. She attended St. Paul School of Art and the Minneapolis School of Art while the next oldest sisters supported the household as teachers. Her patrons supported her through school, helped get her jobs, and sent her letters of encouragement throughout her career.

Not only did she ask for and accept help from others, she expressed gratitude for all that she had received. In a letter to a patron, she said:

I marvel at how you were able to find me through my rather inadequate little poems and illustrations, but you did—and as I re-read your letters I was deeply touched by them. I was so bewildered, so timid about acknowledging Wanda Gág, and so very much alone, aesthetically. Your letters were like a substantial, but forming-like latticework for my groping young tendrils to hang on. With your apt and intense way of putting things, you showed me the way to myself, and with your tactful praise you gave me confidence in that self. In short, you made me feel much more at home with Wanda Gág than I had been since the death of my father…you were the one who first supplied me with the Springboards from which I could leap into the land where I really belonged. And I do thank you very much for that.

4. Learn from others, but do it in your own way.

Her time at school was rigorous, and she often struggled between the rigidity of instruction and her need for inspiration.

Life without a drawing mood is miserable, miserable, miserable…I am trying to entice, to lure, and to recapture it, but of course it's all in vain. Drawing moods, delicious tyrants as they are when they let me draw, are cruelly tyrannical when they don't let me see things so that I want to draw them, and they cannot be brought by human aid.
I am blamed for not working when I’m not inspired…I see first and then I do…When I draw, I draw. When I don’t draw, I am studying character or other things and I’m sure the time is not wasted.

A huge theme in her journals at the time was that the time not making art was actually essential to her art.

I always feel that the best way to study art is to study other things with it…It seems to me it cannot be wrong to read good poetry an entire morning if you happen to be particularly receptive in that respect, because when you are poetically receptive, you see so much of life behind the world.

Though she actively learned from others her entire life, she liked doing it in her own way. For example, when she was told by her life class instructors that she had to block the entire figure first in four lines, she felt frustrated because she preferred blocking them in her mind so the lines would be more “spontaneous.”

I don’t give two cents how other people work. Just because every one else works one way, is just the reason why I must work another. An imitation never gets far and, what is worse, no one who is an imitation can be himself.

5. A social life is an essential part of an art career.

Though she sometimes rebelled against teachers, she found some kindred spirits in her fellow students. With them, she explored exhibits and galleries. She expanded her creative circle and experienced new forms of art. She met once a week with other free-thinkers to discuss “love, humanity, justice and similar things” which thrilled her. Even though at times she wanted to quit school, her friendships kept her going.

Not only did she receive support and expand her mind and heart, she also expanded her opportunities. In 1917, an editor commissioned her first children’s book illustration, A Child’s Book of Folk-Lore-Mechanics of Written English by Jean Sherwood Rankin. She received a lot of praise from publishers and began to consider children’s books seriously as a career path. This paved the way for what would later become her most famous work of art.

That same year, she received a scholarship to the prestigious Art Students League in New York with her friend (and eventual lover) Adolph Dehn. Through the connections she cultivated, she received commercial art, magazine, and gallery opportunities which helped her support her family back at home.

6. Even when you are doing your best, life happens.

During that time, her mom passed away. The community wanted to send her younger siblings to foster homes and orphanages. Instead, Gág sold the house and moved her family to Minneapolis. She gave each child a job including finances, food, clothing, and cleaning.

Meanwhile, she still worked in New York, sending money home to her family. Many of her male friends were going off to war and there were lots of political conflicts at her college. She was continuously worried about her younger siblings at home who, despite all the support from the older siblings, were still cold and hungry.

To save additional money, she moved into a costume designer’s studio, sleeping on a cot after business hours while she built up her freelance commercial work. Though she didn’t like it, it helped pay the bills. To supplement, she sometimes had to take odd jobs like decorating lampshades or commercial fashion work (which she hated the most).

I am happy to get as much work as I am getting, but my bigger and temporarily squelched self is becoming very importunate these days and demands of me all sorts of sacrifices for its satisfaction and expression. It is not exactly a pleasant feeling. It doesn't show a great deal just now, but I am relentlessly ambitious, and it makes me ill to have to do this other, and to see other people go on ahead expressing themselves, while I have to stay temporarily in the background.

7. You aren’t alone in the struggle between honoring your creative voice and making money.

Between 1920 and 1928, Gág produced over 100 lithographs — a combination of urban and rural objects, interiors, and landscapes — and became well known as a printmaker.

But magazines and other revenues began to demand art that provided a more direct social commentary (like political cartoons) which Gág considered formulaic and condescending to their audience. Conflicted about making commercial art to provide for her family and her own voice as an artist, she struggled with the “artificiality, the “glare,” the “high unnatural key of things,” and the materialism she experienced in New York.

"I do not want to live in the restless, hectic, busy-busy life for which Americans are noted. I want to sort of ramble through life — not lazily, for I must be active to be happy. I want to read and study and work hard and live, but I do not want always to feel myself rushing along in pursuit of money."

She called this her “hideous period” when she was “unable to do anything worth while.” She felt lost and disconnected from her own creative voice due to her commercial work (especially fashion drawings) and a difficult break up with Dehn. She considered it “the only time” in her life that she “struck bottom.”

After spending the holidays in Connecticut, she determined that a return to nature was essential for her work.

8. When we listen to and honor ourselves, opportunities come knocking — but they still require hard work.

After debating about taking more classes, she ultimately decided on drawing what she wanted to draw. She rented a home in Connecticut where she lived with a coming-and-going mix of friends, lovers, and family while studying the forms of trees, rocks, and clouds, “trying to extract from them the marvelous inexhaustible secrets of their existence.”

The country was lovely. I had decided to draw if I could possibly force myself to do so. By the third day I despaired of being able to accomplish anything. But I took my drawing material and sneaked off to the woods. But nothing would come. Everything seemed too subtle for me to grasp and put down. I lay face downward on last year's leaves and basked in the warm sun. And I meditated. It helped. Here I was among Nature's rich rhythms. Nothing but her little stirrings and murmurings were to be heard. People were far away, abstract. I knew I could not always think so, but for the time being I felt that self-expression, art, nature's fertile and elemental measures were the things my life was to be swayed by, and that human beings were but feeble forces compared to these.
I tried to make myself consider what it was I was really drawing at. I have had some difficulty in doing this lately, due to almost a year's abstinence from unhampered self-expression.
The result of all this was that I regained my artistic bearings sufficiently to make two drawings. Bad ones, of course, but they were a beginning. The next day I made six drawings, the one after that 3, and the last morning I made 3 more. Some are not totally bad.

While she worked, her now partner Earle Humphreys and Gág’s siblings would take care of all the chores and other responsibilities. She submitted her work and was featured in many exhibits and galleries. She sold lithographs, children’s boxes, and even crossword puzzles.

It made me happy to think that I had been able to get money for the things I really liked to do. That doesn’t happen often enough.

She and Humphreys ended up losing their Connecticut rental so they moved to rural New Jersey where they rented an old three-acre farm they called Tumble Timbers. Gág struggled to make work because she couldn’t pay for art supplies, so she wrote a letter to a gallery that had her drawings and asked them to help her sell them. They did (and even took less of a commission than normal).

In 1926, at age 33, she had her first one person exhibition at Carl Zigrosser's Weyhe Gallery in New York. Famous artists attended and loved her work that mixed her folktale roots with her love of nature. Thanks to the financially and critically successful solo show and her other work, she was able to help all seven siblings graduate from high school and officially leave commercial art.

The joy I get out of drawing overwhelms me. This feeling has been heightened by several forms of appreciation, which have come to me recently. The fact that I have tangible proof of my things giving pleasure to several people gives me a greater pleasure in doing more of it. It gives me greater confidence in my view point, and the result is probably a greater strength and spontaneity in my drawings.

9. Experimentation is essential to finding your creative voice.

As she explored her artistic voice, she focused on “seeing with a free-er eye” wanting to capture the spirit of nature in her work. She would often take her art supplies with her outside “in quest of the hill form principle.”

“I want to show the volume of atmosphere, its essential form as related to (or rather produced by) the object it surrounds.”

She drew by lamplight in the evenings and sometimes her sisters were her models. Van Gogh became more and more of a huge inspiration to her: To relax, she listened to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and read Dostoevski while canning cherries.

In addition to her signature sandpaper, she experimented with zinc plates, using a watercolor brush wash to make solid shapes or outlines and the lithographic crayon to build up values.

I am anxious to do my very best on them—I want them to look as tho they had grown, and not as tho they had been ‘turned out.’

Eventually, her experimentation guided her to what would become her most famous work: Millions of Cats.

10. Let both your inner and outer eye guide your creative path.

Back in around 1920, Gág had submitted a half-finished manuscript about cats to a New York publisher and gotten rejected (most likely because she was an unknown artist at the time.) But after her show at the Weyhe Gallery in 1926, she became a well-connected, critically acclaimed artist of both watercolors and print-making; an editor named Ernestine Evans at Coward-McCann publishing firm took notice.

Evans was drawn to the combination of whimsy and serious social issues at the heart of Gág’s story, and after meeting the artist, she was impressed with her childlike honesty and character. Millions of Cats was published in 1928 and immediately became a classic.

Gág didn’t talk down to her audience and brought her European folktale sensibility to what was typically a very didactic field. Her experience raising siblings and teaching children gave her a belief that children are capable and observant individuals who do not need to be shielded from reality.

In an article she wrote called “I Like Fairy Tales” (Horn Book Magazine), Wanda said:

Certainly children are fascinated by stories concerning the modern miracles of science, and why shouldn't they be? But why shouldn't they also be interested in other kinds of stories? In fact, I believe it is just the modern children who need [fairy tales], since their lives are already over-balanced on the side of steel and stone and machinery…"

Her respect for her audience definitely translated as it was an immediate hit with reviewers and readers, selling 15,000 copies within a year. It is considered the oldest book that has never gone out of print. Additionally, it influenced all the picture books that came after it because Gág treated both the text and illustrations as elements of composition.

She cared a lot about the quality of her books. Her brother Howard hand-lettered the text because Gág didn’t like what the publishers had provided. She also spent days at the printing shop fighting for the highest quality print job.

And the result? This review from the famous librarian Anne Carroll Moore says it all:

“Is the story based on an old folk tale?” I asked Wanda Gag.
She shook her head. ”No it isn’t a folk tale,” she said. “I invented it, pictures and all, for some children in Connecticut who were always clamoring for stories. The way of telling it may have been influenced by the Marchen I heard as a child. They were the stories I know best. What we have known and felt in childhood stays with us,” she added, with a quick, rhythmical movement of her whole being.
No cloying reminiscent from Wanda Gag. She’s alive to the tips of her toes in a living present. I shall always see her moving with confidence, her headlight the most piercing dark eyes I have ever met.
“Cats are very hard to draw,” I ventured.”
“Don’t I know it,” replied Wanda Gag. “I had to live with two of them to do millions.”
There you have the secret of Wand Gag’s power. She trusted neither her inward nor her outward eye alone—each sustains and supports the other.

11. Keep challenging yourself with new mediums, styles, and formats.

Even though Gág was now in high demand in both the printmaking and children’s book world, she never stopped pushing herself.

Galleries. Her work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the New York World’s Fair.

Books. Gág continued to make children’s books and art.

“I aim to make the illustrations for children’s books as much a work of art as anything I would send to an art exhibition. I strive to make them completely accurate in relation to the text. I try to make them warmly human, imaginative, or humourous - not coldly decorative - and to make them so clear that a three-year-old can recognize the main object in them.”

By 1931, book sales and other work enabled her to buy her own farm in rural New Jersey and build a studio that she named All Creation. She made Snippy and Snappy, The ABC Book, and some Grimm fairytale translations. She also attempted an ambitious project to illustrate Walden Pond but never finished. During the Great Depression, her children’s book royalties supported her and her family.

Practice. Throughout all of this successful work, she threw away lots of sketches. She did master copies of Cézanne and Van Gogh to explore space and form and achieve more depth. She pushed herself to “whip into submission [her] drawing moods.”

Painting. Gág put a lot of pressure on herself as an artist and was especially frustrated trying to master painting. This may have been because her father was a painter who wanted her to continue his work, but it was mainly tied to her friend and mentor Carl Zigrosser who believed paintings would elevate her career.

I am so anxious to find myself in painting this time.

Despite all her efforts, she never felt satisfied with her use of color — it became muddy or felt only decorative. As she continued, her friends and family worried about the exhaustion they could see in her physical features.

New ways of using “old” mediums. Though she wanted to master painting, she still loved making lithographs.

I have been working on three lithographs. With two of them I got quite daring, one might say reckless, in the use of washes, and I’m afraid I’ve spoiled them. But I felt the need of doing something drastic in order to get into a freer style, and even if they’re spoiled, I don’t mind. I will have learned something by it.

Writing. With her failing health and the declaration of WWII, writing became a hope for her.

While I'm painting nowadays, I feel selfish to be putting down one stroke or another, while human beings are starving, being executed and being killed by millions on the battlefields; with writing, somehow this feeling is not as strong, perhaps because I feel that provided I can perfect myself in this craft, I will later be able to write some of my deepest convictions as I could not hope to do graphically or in color.

After collecting diary entries, she published an autobiography in 1940.

My diary means my life, and what’s in my life must go into it. The only way you can keep out of my diary is to keep out of my life.

12. You still have so much to say and do.

Sadly, Gág’s health began to decline, eventually to the point of being bed-ridden over long periods of time. Her hands swelled up after painting all day to the point she had to wear gloves all the time (possibly from lead poisoning). She was also overcome with self-doubt about her latest work.

Some of the things I wrote about art made me feel that I wanted badly to draw fiercely again, smashingly; in big rich, frill-less powerful rhythms. I feel definitely that my work of recent years has not had sufficient power, and sometimes I am overcome with a certain fury because of it. I don’t know how to describe it. I want to weep tears of fury and defiance as I say, “I can do it. I still have something to say. I will do it.”

She would occasionally cut out meat, coffee, and tobacco to try to restore herself. But ultimately, at age 50, she showed the first signs of lung cancer.

Oh, I do hope everything will come out alright. I still have so much drawing and painting to do. If I can get over this I feel sure I will have it in me to draw better.
There is no pretending that I am not worried about it all, and I just don't feel like dwelling on it. Earle has been so very good and efficient and helpful and last night when he left to go to bed I said "good night darling, I love you very much." That's quite a lot for me to say—not that I didn't feel it often, but it is just part of the Gág character of understatement. He was moved and pleased and he said some endearing things too and we both had tears in our eyes.

Her husband stayed by her side her final two years before she passed away in 1946.

13. Keep reaching.

As I studied Wanda Gág, I felt inspired by her courage to explore and do, even when others judged her for it. She lived life on her own terms and was always writing in her journal through the big life questions. And I think the best way to end part one is with her words:

My aim is limitless. That I will never reach it I know, but I'm going to get as near there as I can. That will keep me running all the rest of my life, believe me.