About the Author-Illustrator

Hardie Gramatky was born in Dallas, Texas, moved at age 10 to California when his father died, and attended Stanford University and Chouinard School of Art. He helped start the regional art known as the California Watercolor movement in the late 1920s at the same time that he began work in 1929 as an animator for Walt Disney Studios. When his contract was up in 1936, he and his wife (artist Dorothea Cooke, whose nickname was “Doppy”) moved to New York City to work as illustrators. It was in 1939 that Gramatky saw a small Moran tugboat out on the East River that didn’t seem to want to work, and out of that grew a pile of watercolors, the idea for a children’s book, and then Little Toot was published as one of G. P. Putnam’s first children’s books.

In 1946, the artist, his wife and daughter, Linda, moved to Connecticut, and in 1951 Gramatky was elected an academician in the National Academy of Design, an honor given to only 24 “aquarellists”, as watercolor artists were called back then. Little Toot was honored by the Library of Congress when it named the story of the mischievous tugboat a classic in children’s literature, and in 1949 Little Toot was a float in the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, CA. Over six million copies of the book have been sold over the years and it has been translated into Japanese, Thai, Danish, South African, Afrikaans and other languages.

A modest, optimistic man, Gramatky would have been stunned to be named in 2006 by Andrew Wyeth to a list of the twenty all-time great American watercolorists, but the proof is in how his paintings and books have lived on after him. His 100th birthday was on April 12, 2007, and in September 2007, a restored classic edition of Little Toot was published by Penguin Putnam with the vibrant red and blue colors of the original first edition and charming endpapers included that had not been seen for 40 years.

Gramatky's art shown in exhibition: There was a five-month Hardie Gramatky exhibit in 2008 at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA. And two illustrations from the restored edition of Little Toot were chosen by a jury to be in the Original Art 2008 exhibition at the Society of Illustrations (October - December 2008) of the best children's book art of the previous year ... and now we have learned that Gramatky's art will tour in a traveling exhibit of 40 pieces to schools all over the United States in 2009! Currently there is a five-month exhibit (November 2008 - April 2009) of 30+ watercolors and illustrations at the Custom House Maritime Museum, 150 Bank Street, New London, CT (telephone 860-447-2501). For information about Gramatky's giclée prints and original watercolors, see www.gramatky.com.

For further information, please contact:

Linda Gramatky Smith
(203) 222-8220
LittleTootBooks@aol.com


At home in 1977. Clockwise from left: Hardie Gramatky, son in law Kendall Smith, daughter Linda Gramatky Smith, grandson Andrew, grandaughter Tina, wife Dorothea.