I am in a room with three other girls—Miss Philadelphia, Miss Cincinnati and Miss Beaumont. It Is a little crowded

© SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. Photograph and digital image © Delaware Art Museum…
© SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN.
I am in a room with three other girls—Miss Philadelphia, Miss Cincinnati and Miss Beaumont. It Is a little crowded
© SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. Photograph and digital image © Delaware Art Museum. Not for reproduction or publication.

I am in a room with three other girls—Miss Philadelphia, Miss Cincinnati and Miss Beaumont. It Is a little crowded

Date1928
Artist May Wilson Watkins Preston American illustrator, 1873–1949
Illustration Citation"Miss Brooklyn and Queens," by Edith Fitzgerald, in The Saturday Evening Post, June 15, 1929
MediumCharcoal and watercolor on illustration board
Dimensionscomposition: 16 1/2 × 17 1/4 in. (41.9 × 43.8 cm)
sheet: 20 13/16 × 19 3/4 in. (52.9 × 50.2 cm)
frame: 26 7/8 × 26 7/8 × 1 in. (68.3 × 68.3 × 2.5 cm)
Credit LineGift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1987
Object number1987-151
On View
Not on view
ClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextThis drawing illustrates a humorous story about a woman whose mother, without her permission, enters her photograph in a magazine's competition for the Most Beautiful Working Girl. Modern beauty pageants started with the first Miss America Pageant, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1921.

The reverse shows a detailed sketch of the figure seated at the right, demonstrating Preston's careful working methods. Trained as a painter, Preston undertook illustration to support herself when her first husband died. She later married the artist James Preston; they were among the founders of the Society of Illustrators in New York, which remains a major professional organization today.
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