Margery Williams

"When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real," the Skin Horse told the Rabbit. So wrote Margery Williams in her children's classic, The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Became Real, which was first published in 1922.
Williams, the author of many children's books, resided from the age of nine to nineteen in the United States and attended the Convent School in Sharon Hills, Pennsylvania. After her marriage to the Italian bookseller Francisco Bianco, she lived in France, England, and Italy before settling permanently in New York City in 1921. This portrait was painted by the Biancos' close friend James Bolivar Manson, a member of the Camden Town Group, which was composed of sixteen English artists who aspired to emulate European modernism.