(Original Illustration Art / 20th Century / Children's Literature)115 ORIGINAL PEN, INK AND WATERCOLOR DRAWINGS BY BERTA AND ELMER HADER PUBLISHED IN SONNY ELEPHANT BY MADGE A. BIGHAM.
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1930. A monumental, structurally complete archive comprising 115 original pen, ink, and watercolor drawings executed by the celebrated husband-and-wife illustrating team Berta and Elmer Hader. This collection represents all but seven of the total illustrations utilized to publish the FIRST EDITION of Madge A. Bigham's beloved children's book, Sonny Elephant. The 115 distinct illustrations are rendered across 79 sheets of heavy artist board of varying physical dimensions. The archive encompasses a diverse array of publication elements: six unique decorative border designs, dozens of small spot drawings intended for placement within the text columns, numerous large full-page compositions, and a grand, double-page layout utilized for the book's front and back endpapers. Included alongside the archive is a clean FIRST EDITION reading copy of Sonny Elephant (1930), serving as a definitive bibliographical key for the placement and reproduction of the artwork.
The physical condition of the print is graded (7/10) - FINE (utilizing a standardized 10-point scale for photographic prints and original works of art, indicating mild or moderate condition issues that attract the eye under gallery lighting conditions) or better. The primary image fields are remarkably clean, bright, and stable, with the Haders' fine ink lines and vivid watercolor washes perfectly preserved; the heavy artist boards exhibit typical, localized adhesive residue and minor handling smudges strictly confined to the outer margins from historical matting arrangements, not affecting the artwork.
Berta and Elmer Hader and the Golden Age of American Picture Books
Active from the late 1910s through the 1960s, Berta and Elmer Hader achieved legendary status within the landscape of twentieth-century American children's literature, ultimately collaborating on more than 70 distinct volumes. Their artistic partnership was uniquely seamless, often working simultaneously on the same sheets to blend fluid watercolor techniques with precise, character-driven draftsmanship. This 1930 archive for Sonny Elephant captures the Haders at a pivotal creative juncture, just a decade before they would achieve the highest institutional honors in their field, including a Caldecott Honor in 1940 for Cock-a-Doodle-Doo, another in 1944 for The Mighty Hunter, and the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal in 1949 for The Big Snow. The lively, sympathetic portrayals of animals showcased throughout these 115 drawings reflect the foundational style that defined their celebrated career.
Series Bibliography, Census, and Market Scarcity
While isolated spot illustrations or single standalone plates by the Haders occasionally appear on the market, the survival of the final production artwork for one of their major pre-war children's publications is an extraordinary scarcity. Most publisher files and artist estates from this era were routinely broken up, scattered, or destroyed. A current global sweep of the OCLC/WorldCat database locates no other similar or complete final watercolor archive for any single Hader book title preserved in institutional special collections worldwide. Instead, institutional holdings are mainly limited to separate historical papers or working materials, such as the archival holdings at the University of Oregon and the University of Southern Mississippi. A manuscript book dummy for Sonny Elephant is secured at Yale University Library, containing circa 90 preliminary pencil sketches and circa nine watercolor illustrations—representing the early preparatory stages for the volume rather than the finished production art. The preservation of this primary corpus of 115 final drawings alongside the original text represents a premier curatorial opportunity to study the physical layout, mechanical margins, and production methodology of a major 1930s juvenile publication.
THIS EXCEPTIONALLY RARE AND COMPREHENSIVE PRODUCTION ARCHIVE OF 115 ORIGINAL BERTA AND ELMER HADER DRAWINGS FOR SONNY ELEPHANT REPRESENTS A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION ART, TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN PICTURE BOOKS, OR PRE-WAR JUVENILE LITERATURE.
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