12 February 2008
Artist of the Tarot, and “Lady Magician”
A Night in Celebration of Pamela Colman Smith
by Christina Oakley Harrington and Caroline Wise

Pamela Colman Smith painted the Rider-Waite tarot deck and died in obscurity. She was a magician in a time when this was very male dominated pursuit.


Each seat had a Tarot card (from Rider Waite deck) and a party popper. My card was four of staves, featuring a wedding canopy which is interesting as this week it is Valentine's day and a leap year. Christina said talk was very popular and that they had to turn away 40 people.

There were three parts to the talk:
1. Talk by Christina about life of Pamela Colman Smith
2. Caroline Wise slide show
3. 12th anniversary of her birthday celebration

1. Talk by Christina about life of Pamela Colman Smith

Christina encountered her via Rider-Waite, the Golden Dawn and A.E. Waite, Yates etc. who were all around at the time (Rider was publisher). Ten years ago in conversation with Caroline Wise they discussed how painter was not given credit. Also the Rider-Waite tarot deck is the most plagiarised tarot deck.
Painted around 1910 by a woman magician - this caught Christina's interest. Pamela Colman Smith lived from 1878 to 1951. Her father was a white American merchant with a fair amount of wealth and her mother Corin Colman was from Jamaica. Pamela's nickname form birth was Pixie. She spent her childhood in the Caribbean, Brooklyn New York and Kensington in London. Her strongest ties were to her family and she lost her mother when she was ten years old. Ellen Terry who ran the Lyceum Theatre adopted Pixie Smith and she became friends with Terry's daughter. Both became open lesbians in later life. Pixie was sent by her father to study art in the US and when she came back to the UK she decided to become a magician. Her mentor was A.E. Waite in the Golden Dawn.

She practised meditation, visualization and drawing the symbols of the tarot. In 1908 she got a commission from A. E. Waite to do a tarot deck. It is unknown whether it was his vision or if she sparked the initiative. She painted eighty cards between April and October of that year, drawing them in ink and then painting them in. It is very unlikely that considering the number of cards she produced in such a short time period that A.E. Waite had a hands on involvement with the cards and hence it is likely that the imagery is her vision of the tarot.

A.E. Waite wrote a memo making mention of "...recognizing Pixie Smith as a draftsman amongst us..." that he chose to paint the tarot deck and the somewhat pompous tone of the memo could be clearly heard when Christina read the details of the memo aloud. After the founding members of the Golden Dawn ran it for three years and then went to Paris, it was run for ten years by Florence Farr with the help of friends. Pixie Smith being a magician and a woman in white Victorian England did not change herself radically to fit in, instead finding her own niche in society. She held soirées in which visitors signed the guest book upon arrival at her parties, where announced by the butler and then invited to the room in which she read Annancy tales in a Jamaican accent and told stories about the magic of her African-Caribbean ancestry.

She was a lesbian but at the time such things were not discussed in polite society. Pixie lived with her partner for forty years and died in Cornwell with a number of debts. With the involvement of her partner her art was sold off to pay off these debts. She died in poverty and obscurity and received a pauper's funeral. Had she received even a small part of the royalties of the Rider-Waite tarot deck she would have been very well off indeed. During Christina's investigation in to Pamela Colman Smith's life she came across a gentleman very well versed in the Golden Dawn who knew Pixie's tailor in London. He commented that Pixie Smith was very forthright in her opinions and was rather scathing of men. She had a strong sense of character of who she was.


2. Caroline Wise slide show

Caroline began by pointing out that each person attending the talk had a tarot card on their chairs that had a particular significance to that person, the cards are almost like living things. This is the 12th year of celebrating Pamela Colman Smith's birthday. Her art is currently being shown in Atlanta having just completed an exhibition in Santa Fe and today it was announced that it would be shown in San Diego, a city in which a close friend of Caroline lives and where she had planned to go on holiday this year.

In February of 1995 whilst her colleague Carl was in Brazil, Caroline was sitting at Phil Hine's desk in the office going through the post when she looked in the Christie's catalogue (from which they bought esoteric and occult art) and saw a beautiful blue painting by Pamela Colman Smith. Caroline recognised the painting as being the same work as the artist that did the Rider Waite tarot deck that they sold a couple of dozen or so each month. She called up the phone and put in a very low bid and several weeks later got a call from the auction house asking when she would pick up her painting as they might have to start charging her storage costs. It turns out that she was the only one who put in a bid for the painting. The journey to pick up the painting involved a number of occult synchronicities but that is a story for another time. It was that year that she decided to start celebrating Pamela Colman Smith's birthday.

Caroline passed the painting around the audience for everyone to look at and asked one chap to read the writing on the back of the painting by Pixie Smith herself. It stated (not exact wording): "Painted listening to Debussy by Pamela Colman Smith. Cathedral bells singing under the sea, mermaids singing under the sea. Painted 1915 (written in June 1943)."

Pixie Smith and Debussy were close friends and she had synethesia so she saw music as pictures. This is what she saw listening to "The Drowned Cathedral" by Debussy. Caroline played the music to the painting to herself when she learnt this and it was a magical experience. When Stuart Kaplan, tarot collector and historian, brought the copyright to her deck then more information started to emerge about the life of Pamela Colman Smith.

A series of slides of paintings by Pixie Smith were shown. She was very in to the Annancy tales, involving the traditional African folk figure Anansi the Spider. Another picture featured Baron Samedi and the next was of a man and woman chatting where the man's shadow had a beaked face. This was based on the actor Henry Irving who worked at the Lyceum Theatre. Bram Stoker was the manager at the Lyceum Theatre and several images were shown from the Lair of the White Wyrm. Henry Irving was a very demanding actor and was said to suck the life out of the business manager Bram Stoker - inspiring him to create Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Widdicombe Fair books sell for $1200 or so and Caroline Wise has a copy with a broken spine and her name written in crayon. When Kate Greenaway was popular Caroline thought that she had a book by Kate but it turned out o have been illustrated by Caroline Colman Smith. More illustrations were shown from a number of books, each with her sigilized signature. She was related to William Gillette who played Sherlock Holmes and other occult artists have also painted Sherlock Holmes. Pages (knights) were influenced by Shakespearean characters from working in the theatre. Pixie Smith had a great empathy for the sea and she saw sea elementals as part of the water and the movement of the water.

Pamela was a catalyst for change even though she did not benefit from this. She went to the snooty and rarefied "291" art gallery that only displayed photography works. She went to see the owner Alfred Stieglitz for advice and wearing feathers in her hair and bright colours read Annancy stories in his gallery. He was known to take chances on people that he liked and after seeing the works that she'd brought to show him he decided to show her work. This changed the art scene in the US and paved the way for other artists to show their wok. It opened the door for modern European art to enter the US and allowed American artists to show that they were as good as their European counterparts.

Alfred Stieglitz exhibited her work twice and on the first occasion thirty two of her works sold. Georgia O’Keeffe exhibited after Pamela Colman Smith and her works now sell for millions of dollars. Later on when Pixie Smith needed some financial help she went to Alfred Stieglitz to sell some paintings but not only did he say that his gallery was not for trade, he made her feel bad for coming to see him in the first place about something so crass as money. Which is nice if you have plenty but not so good when you are a starving artist. Georgia O’Keeffe stashed thirty paintings at Delaware University and some of these are (presumably) included in the works being exhibited in Atlanta at the moment.

The new sky scrapers being raised at the time around the 1880s to 1920s were very stylish and the Egyptian influences in the New York architecture along with the influences coming from the Golden Dawn had an impact on her work. Towers (mirroring the sky scrapers) appear mostly in the pentacle cards that are associated with wealth. If she could get the sea to feature in her art then she would. She painted the sea creatures as if they were part of the water rather than separate from it. The artist Jack Yates wrote to his father of being an acquaintance of the extraordinary Pixie Smith. Yates published a broadsheet in which illustrations were made by Pixie Smith from wood carvings that she painted by hand. The print run went for twelve months and Caroline described a feeling of exploitation on the immense effort put in by Pixie Smith for this and the tarot deck. Caroline was offered four wood carvings years ago for what at the time was a significant amount of money but she turned it down.

Pixie Smith had a circle of Protestant Celtic revivalist friends including Waite and Yates that the Irish nationals would have laughed at. They drank a cocktail called "Opal Hush" that consisted of 1 part Claret, 3 parts chilled Lemonade; poured into wine glass and stirred with NO ice added. One of Pixie Smith's psychic talents was to emphasize completely with children's fantasies. She had numerous toys in the house and herself had a child-like quality. She had the idea of making a children' theatre much like a dolls house. Whilst everyone who saw it thought well of it and talked about it, now one was willing to put money in to this venture. Caroline commented that she feels Pamela Colman Smith would have been delighted to see the Lion King showing at the Lyceum Theatre.

Pixie Smith converted to Catholicism in around 1911 and was said to have run screaming from Waite. She was very involved with women's rights movements at the time producing numerous leaflets and posters. Bryn Mawr University in Philadelphia is supposed to house a collection of this art in their basement that will hopefully be exhibited one day.

Not much is known about Waite's involvement with her creating the Rider-Waite tarot deck when she produced the art for 80 cards in 6 months. He knew that she was talented and a psychic as well as that tarot is the doorway in to another world. If not for Waite she'd be even more obscure and she lived from the 16th February 1878 to the 18th September 1951. She inherited some money and moved to Cornwall where her house was described as being moderately sized, in its own grounds, well decorated and very colourful. She lived there with her companion Norah Lake and helped wounded soldiers via the Red Cross in Cornwall. Caroline has the address of the house in Cornwall and will be planning a trip along with Christina.

Towards the end of her life she lost faith in people and she died sad and bitter. She did not understand why she never benefited from her work and Caroline completed the talk by stating that we'd like to remember her as the Six of Cups, happy and childlike rather than the Queen of Cups.

3. 12th anniversary of her birthday celebration

At the end of the lecture everyone let off their party poppers to celebrate Pamela Colman Smith's birthday. A pink cake was shared amongst the guests at the after-party upstairs in the Treadwells shop.


[Please excuse any spelling mistakes or inaccuracies due to haste of the note taking].