[Oh, don't hurt me! cried Tom. I only want to look at you; you are so handsome

Caption from Drawn to Purpose exhibit: Through the Eyes of a Child. Jessie Willcox Smith employed her keen ability to imagine and evoke the angst and innocent wonder of a child in this breathtaking underwater scene, one of twelve large, lavish drawings that she produced for The Water-Babies, a Victorian story of redemption. The drawings belong among her most admired works and upon her death in 1935, she bequeathed them to the Library. Over her long career, Smith illustrated many classics of children's literature.
Title from mat.
(DLC/PP-1935:0109).
Forms part of: Cabinet of American illustration (Library of Congress).
Published in: The Water Babies / Charles Kingsley. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co., 1916, p. 140.
Exhibited: "Illustrating the Imagination: Celbrating Children's Illustrators from the Cornish Colony and Today" at the Cornish Museum, Windsor, VT, 2009-2010.
Exhibited: "Drawn to Purpose" in the Graphic Arts Gallery, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., March - October 2018.