Nell Brinkley (a portrait photograph)

Not a drawing but a photograph of the artist herself, soft-focus in the pictorial studio manner of the day. Brinkley sits half-turned, a mass of curled light hair framing her face, in a loose white dress with a ribbon at the shoulder and a ring on one hand. She was Hearst's star by her mid-twenties, and the "Brinkley Girl" she drew — all windblown curls and swimming eyes — looked more than a little like this. Readers copied the hairstyle; a Ziegfeld number was built around the type. Seeing the woman behind the trademark is a small correction to a record that tends to keep the invented girl and lose the person who dreamed her up.