1McMein, Neysa1888╨1949artistBorn in Quincy, Illinois, on January 24, 1888, Margery Edna McMein was educated in local schools. After graduating from high school she entered the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, supporting herself by playing piano in nickelodeons, selling hats, and other jobs. In 1913 she went to New York City to seek a career. After a brief stint as an actress she turned to commercial art. On the advice of a numerologist she adopted the name Neysa, and she thereafter credited the change with her rapid success. McMein studied at the Art Students╒ League for a few months and in 1914 sold her first drawing to the Boston Star. The next year she sold a cover to the Saturday Evening Post. Her warm pastel drawings proved highly popular, as did the chic, healthy American girls she drew, and commissions came ever more quickly. During World War I she drew posters for the U.S. and French governments and spent six months in France as a YMCA lecturer and entertainer. From 1923 through 1937 she supplied all of McCall╒s covers at a rate that peaked at $30,000 per year. She also supplied work to McClure╒s, Liberty, Woman╒s Home Companion, Collier╒s, Photoplay, and other magazines, as well as creating advertising graphics for such accounts as Palmolive and Lucky Strike. General Mills╒s Marjorie C. Husted commissioned her to create the image of ╥Betty Crocker.╙ Alongside a highly successful career Neysa McMein managed a brilliant social life. A gay and unself-consciously beautiful woman, she became a regular member of the Algonquin Hotel set, with her closest friends including Alexander Woollcott, Alice Duer Miller, and Jascha Heifetz. Franklin P. Adams, Robert Benchley, Edna Ferber, Irving Berlin, and Bernard Baruch were also among her companions. Her West 57th Street studio was a popular gathering place for her circle. In May 1923 she made an unconventionally unrestrictive marriage with John C. Baragwanath, a mining engineer and author. McMein╒s more private artistic ambitions lay in the field of portraiture, at first in pastels and later in oil. Among her subjects were Presidents Harding and Hoover, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Dorothy Parker, Janet Flanner, Katharine Cornell, Helen Hayes, Dorothy Thompson, Anatole France, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Evans Hughes, and Count Zeppelin (she had been one of the first women to fly in Zeppelin╒s dirigible). Portraiture occupied more of her time with the decline in popularity of her brand of commercial art in the later 1930s. She died in New York City on May 12, 1949. ╬styl ` 0 ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ !I $ 5¬ % !I ï !I û !I ┐ !I ╘ !I !I ! !I o !I x !I z !I ü !I â !I Ö !I ¢ !I ñ !I ª !I » !I 1 !I ▐ C !I m !I ▐ z !I 5¬ Ç !I r !I ▐ â !I ╛ !I ▐ ╔ !I ╥ 5¬ ╙ !I { !I ▐ Æ !I ö !I ▐ ⌐ !I ½ !I ▐ ╣ !I ╗ !I ▐ ╚ !I ╩ !I ▐ █ !I ▌ !I ▐ Φ !I Ω !I ▐ · !I ╛link ` HYPR 1 CHYPR m zHYPR r âHYPR ╛ ╔HYPR { ÆHYPR ö ⌐HYPR ½ ╣HYPR ╗ ╚HYPR ╩ █HYPR
