Gladys Emma Peto
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Gladys Emma Peto (1890, Maidenhead, Berkshire – 1977, Northern Ireland) was an English artist, fashion designer, illustrator and writer of children's books.
Peto was well-known throughout the United Kingdom in the 1920s and '30s. Her obituary, appearing in The Times (London) in 1977, noted that in the '30s it was the "in thing" to wear a Peto dress. Peto's advertising illustrations for infant formula, Ovaltine and many other products were prominently featured in magazines and posters. She illustrated books for children and wrote some of the stories herself.
Peto attended Maidenhead High School and art classes in the town before heading off to London to study at art school there. She married Cuthbert Lindsay Emmerson, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and with him during the 1920s she traveled with him to Malta, Cyprus and Egypt. Among the most interesting Peto productions are the guide books she wrote for English "Sojourners" to those places (i.e., long-term residents). Malta and Cyprus and The Egypt of the Sojourner were published by J.M Dent in London for their Outward Bound Library.
Peto's work remains appealing now for its attractive and inventive art deco style, clearly influenced by Aubrey Beardsley. At its best she captures something magical of the world of childhood and cutting-edge in the world of fashion. Aside from her work, her biography is also full of interest. Though she came of age before World War I, she took a daring career path and became a successful commercial artist. Her work for the fashionable "Sketch" magazine in the teens and twenties is particularly strong. Reading Peto's works, especially her travel book on Egypt, it's clear that she played the part of Colonel's wife as much as she devoted herself to her work.
Sometime in the 1920s the Empire Annual for Australian Girls published "Poster Art Work for Girls, A Talk With Miss Gladys Peto the Well-Known Poster Artist." Peto there discusses her beginnings. Her family was not especially artistic, except for herself. As a girl in Maidenhead, she would go out "in her father's trap" and notice interesting people along the way. She would get home and sketch them. From thence to High School then Art School. After a few years learning academic techniques, she approached her various editors and publishers with her sketches expecting instant success. She didn't find it, but sold two little drawings. It was a beginning. "And [her] family's somewhat discouraging queries as to how I was going to live on that amount did not debar [her] from trying further." In keeping with the Empire Annual's mandate to offer guidance, Peto informs the interviewer that a girl with training, talent and inventiveness might well be able to make her way as a commercial artist: "there is a good living to be made from this particular type of artistic endeavor." No figures are mentioned, but it is noted that "several people are aware that this young lady, as one of the best-known depicters of "fashionable life," and a designer of posters which attract much public attention, makes an annual income which many men in very high positions might well envy."
Peto retired from commercial art in 1946 and moved with her husband, who had also retired from the army, to Northern Ireland. She devoted her remaining years to painting landscapes in watercolors and to drawing and cultivating flowers. She suffered a stroke in 1970 that paralyzed her right, and dominant, hand. She continued to draw, paint and write with her left hand.
Peto's work is invariably signed "Gladys Peto" or GEP and its distinctive style makes it instantly recognizable.
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