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Pamela Colman Smith was commissioned to illustrate the Rider-Waite tarot cards, often also called Rider-Waite-Smith, the most famous deck in North America. However, this work was only part of a prolific artistic production. A pioneer of feminism and a woman in constant search of her identity, Pixie, as she was known by her friends, is a woman of interest today.
Early years and timeline
Corinne Pamela Colman Smith was born on February 16, 1878 in the county of Middlesex (now part of London), England. Her father, Charles Edward Smith, was an American from Brooklyn, New York; some sources indicate that the family of her mother, Corinne Colman, was originally from Jamaica. For the first ten years of her life, Pamela lived in England; when her father got a job with the West India Company, the family moved to Jamaica. From then on, Pamela’s life was spent between London, New York and Kingston. Other relevant events of the artist are listed below.
1893. Due to her artistic talent, Pamela’s father enrolled her in the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn. One of her instructors encouraged her to study Japanese-style artwork, which marked Pamela’s artistic technique, as she would outline her figures with her ink before coloring them.
1897. When she was 19 years old, Pamela’s work was exhibited at the MacBeth Gallery on Fifth Avenue in New York.
1898 Robert Howard Russell, a major New York publisher, began featuring Pamela’s works in several of his publications.
1899. Pamela publishes Annancy Stories , her most popular book. The work is a collection of popular Jamaican children’s stories, interspersed with many of her own black and white illustrations. At the end of this year and the beginning of the next she joined the Lyceum Theater in London as one of the minor members of the cast. Later, she worked as a set designer at various London theatres.
1901. Pamela associates with Watkins Libros, the world’s first bookstore specializing in occult, esoteric, and spiritualism. There, she illustrates works by various authors who are members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society that counted Bram Stoker and Aleister Crowley among its members.
1909.Arthur Edward Waite, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, commissioned Pamela to design what became the most popular tarot deck in history: the Rider-Waite deck. Each card is illustrated with a specific scene, associated with its divinatory meaning. Waite intervened in the design of the 22 cards corresponding to the Major Arcana; the rest, assigned to the Minor Arcana, had Pamela’s total creative freedom. It is believed that the artist took inspiration from the oldest surviving deck, the Sola Busca. Despite the reception of the Rider-Waite tarot, Pamela described her paintings as “great work for very little money”. The name of the deck did not give credit to Pamela, which continues to be sold under that name. However, or Waite Smith.
1911. Pamela converted to Roman Catholicism. Apparently, she remained a Catholic for the rest of her life, which alienated her from almost all of her former friends and colleagues. The amount and frequency of her artistic output also declined.
1951. Pamela dies in poverty. After her death, her paintings and drawings were auctioned off to clear her debts. Unfortunately, her death certificate listed her occupation as “spinster of independent means.”
Legacy
The life of Pamela Colman Smith is a testament to the constant efforts to overcome patriarchal structures in the 20th century, relevant today. Her work as an illustrator, folklorist, editor, poet, and suffragette is closely related to modern movements such as feminism and struggles for gender and racial equality.
Pixie lived in the constant search and exploration of her identity in various aspects. For example, it is estimated that she had a fluid binary sexual identity, or at least she demonstrated that before converting to Catholicism. This is because she was never married, she did not have a long-term relationship with any man and she did not have children, but she did date and live with women.
In addition, taking into account the origin of her parents, it is presumed that Pamela was biracial, a situation in which she lived: on one occasion, when someone believed that she was Japanese, she caricatured herself in a kimono. At another stage in her life, when she was writing traditional Jamaican stories, she began to wear some of the traditional clothing of the Kingston women.
Finally, it is known that Pamela was always interested in spirituality and that she was part of various cults. However, scholars of her life consider that Pamela leaned towards various religious structures, but not dogmatically.
Sources
Sketchbook. Pamela Colman-Smith . NodoArte, April 21, 2021.
Potts, Dianca L. Who was Pamela Colman Smith? The ‘mystic’ woman behind the Rider-Waite tarot deck . The Lily, July 26, 2018.
Ramgopal, Lakshmi. Demystifying Pamela Colman Smith . Shondaland, July 6, 2018.
Rider-Waite Tarot – Origin and Symbology . Astromundus.
