Neysa McMein

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McMein sold her first drawing to the Boston Star in 1914. She created Harry Horowitz's portrait in 1915 before he was executed for Herman Rosenthal's murder. That year, she sold an illustration for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post and her Misinformation illustration appeared on the May 8, 1915, cover of Puck magazine. She became known for her portrayal of "All American Girls."

McMein made posters for French and United States governments during World War I, as did Thelma Cudlipp, Helen Hyde and Mary Brewster Hazelton. Posters that she made also were used by the American Red Cross in its fund-raising campaigns.

She traveled across France to entertain the troops in 1918. Of her time at the Western Front, McMein said, "Since I have lived through air bombing I never will be frightened by anything on earth. The terror of air raids cannot be imagined. They are heralded by the blowing of sirens and the ringing of church bells, and amid this din the lights are extinguished and then suddenly come the bombs, falling no one knows where. The noise they made is worse than that of the battles."

McMein made portraits of some of the soldiers, drew cartoons, and colored the design of the Indian head insignia that was then used by the 93rd Bomb Squadron to denote the number of German planes that a given plane shot down by drawing a German black cross over one of the bear teeth in a necklace worn around the Indian head. She returned to the United States to care for her mother after her father died. While in Quincy, she spoke at two fund-raising drives. "[McMein] was the main attraction. The theater was filled. She was an excellent speaker; very witty and clever," according to Sarah Carney. For her efforts supporting the U.S. war effort, McMein was appointed an honorary non-commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps, one of only three women to be so honored.

Her illustrations appeared on the covers and within articles for McClure's magazine by 1919. By the 1920s, McMein and Jessie Willcox Smith were two of the major women magazine illustrators of their time. Together, they created hundreds of covers for McCall's and Good Housekeeping magazines. Joseph Bernt, author of the article "The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media" found that both women and Norman Rockwell generally portrayed women in covers and illustrations as mothers, with scenes centered around children, during the 1920s and 1930s. Within the covers of the magazine were illustrations made by the three artists to sell consumer products, like Orange Crush, Ivory soap, Chesterfield cigarettes, and Holeproof Hosiery. Following World War I, increased emphasis of family life was presented in mass media following a period when woman's suffrage and the New Woman were depicted in publications from the late 1800s according to Bernt. Carolyn Kitch, author of the book The Girl on the Magazine Cover, finds, however, that McMein created illustrations of confident, modern New Women for her magazine covers, while Jessie Wilcox Smith concentrated more steadily on children.

From 1923 through 1937, McMein created all of McCall's covers. She also supplied work to National Geographic, Woman's Home Companion, Collier's, and Photoplay. McMein earned up to $2,500 (estimated equivalent to $34,740 in 2021) per cover illustration. She created advertising graphics for Cadillac, Lucky Strike cigarettes and Palmolive soap.

Together with artists Howard Chandler Christy and Harrison Fisher, McMein constituted the jury for Motion Picture Classic magazine's "Fame and Fortune" contest of 1921/1922, which discovered the It girl Clara Bow. Other promotional activities including judging Coney Island beauty contests or opening movie houses. McMein designed silk textiles in the mid-1920s, three examples of which are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In December 1929, she consulted with Studebaker's design department, with five other women artists and decorators.

General Mills commissioned her to create the image of Betty Crocker, a fictional housewife in 1936. She created an official portrait of Betty Crocker by combining features of the home economists employed by the company, which helped reinforce that Crocker was a real person. The image of the "ageless" 32-year-old was used in advertising and on packaging until 1955 when Hilda Taylor painted an updated Betty, who also wore bright red and white clothing. Like the Betty Crocker image, "Miss McMein was herself a kind of American demigoddess: the most courted of commercial artists, hostess in her New York studio to all of the 'Algonquin wits'—Benchley, Parker, Franklin P. Adams—a wit herself. Sophistication lay rouge-deep upon the personalities of her cover girls; beneath lay reassuring testimonials to health and wholesomeness," wrote James Gray, author of Business Without Boundary: The Story of General Mills.

In 1943, McMein collaborated with Alicia Patterson Guggenheim to create a comic strip, called "Deathless Deer." The strip starred a "deathless" Egyptian princess who awakens in modern New York City. McMein, while talented, was unfamiliar with comic strip drafting and conventions, and Guggenheim's writing suffered with the format. The strip was a commercial and critical failure; it was discontinued in 1943.

In April 1938, McCall's Magazine did not renew McMein's contract to produce illustrations for the magazine. By then, magazines could cost-effectively publish color photographs using four-color machines. McMein entered the field of portraiture, at first using pastels to depict Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Helen Hayes. She painted portraits of presidents Herbert Hoover and Warren G. Harding, author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and actors Charlie Chaplin and Beatrice Lillie. McMein also painted Katharine Cornell, Kay Francis, Janet Flanner, Dorothy Thompson, Anatole France, Charles Evans Hughes and Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. She mentored photographer Lee Miller.

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