Pamela Colman Smith Art
I have created this page in honor of Pamela Colman Smith, the illustrator of the original Rider Waite Smith Tarot deck.
Pamela Colman Smith (nicknamed Pixie) was an artist, illustrator, publisher, occultist and writer. She is best known for the Tarot drawings she produced under the guidance of British scholarly mystic, Arthur Edward Waite. These drawings became the iconic Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck.
She was born in London in 1878. She spent some of her childhood in Jamaica, where her mother originated, and later moved to Brooklyn, New York. There she studied art at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League of New York. In 1909, she was commissioned by Arthur Edward Waite to produce a tarot deck with appeal to the world of art. The result was 78 illustrations that were published by the Rider Company in 1909.
The cards became known as the Waite-Smith Tarot Deck, and are now recognized as icons of Western Tarot.
The images represent archetypal subjects who become portals to an invisible realm of signs and symbols. They are believed to have been channeled through processes of divination. These cards have endured in popularity for more than 100 years. Each one is an original work of art, which are some of the best examples of Smith’s imaginative work.
Some of her other work included a series of illustrated books of Jamaican Folklore, Featuring popular folklore characters of the time, such as Anansi the Spider. She also illustrated Bram Stoker’s last novel, The Lair of the White Worm, in 1911. Smith never received any royalties from the Tarot Illustrations she produced for the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck. Nor did she achieve commercial success with her popular artwork and she died penniless in Cornwall in September 1951. She would, no doubt, be pleased to know that today, her art reaches out and touches the hearts of millions through her tarot deck.
Learn More about Pamela Colman Smith, her fascinating life and art in “The Untold Story”
“I do not want to see riotous, clumsy ugliness suddenly spring up, but a fine noble power shining through your work. The illustrations that I see in the magazines by the younger people are all dignified and well, carefully and conscientiously drawn, but their appalling clumsiness is quite beyond me—their lack of charm and grace.
I do not mean by charm, prettiness, but an appreciation of beauty. Ugliness is beauty, but with a difference, a nobleness that speaks through all the hard crust of convention.”