Joe Krush: Illustrator of Eudora Welty’s The Ponder Heart

Joe Krush began working on drawings for Eudora Welty’s first illustrated book, The Ponder Heart, during the summer of 1953. His reputation with Harcourt Brace already well established, Krush believes he was selected for this project due to his strong relationship with Harcourt’s art editor, Margaret McElderry. Once a publisher becomes comfortable with an artist, Krush revealed to me in a phone conversation, the publisher tends to rely heavily on that artist’s work. By 1953, Joe Krush and his wife Beth, also a well known artist and illustrator, had already illustrated many Harcourt children’s books including Geoffrey Trease’s Trumpets in the West (1947) and Fiord (1950), Louise Untermeyer’s Magic Circle (1952), and Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (1953) and Huon of the Horn (1951). Ten years after illustrating The Ponder Heart, Harcourt once again chose Beth and Joe Krush to illustrate Welty’s work, this time creating caricatures for Welty’s only children’s book, The Shoe Bird (1964). Although it seems that Welty had little or no part in selecting Krush as illustrator for her work, she did actively participate in the process of illustration itself.

During the 1930s and 1940s, while Welty was busy writing, publishing, and establishing her career, she was also busy taking photographs of the people and places around her. Although many of Welty’s stories revolve around the types of people and places seen in her photographs, Welty states in an interview with Hunter Cole in 1989 that “her fiction’s source is living life” and that she never used her photographs as source material for her stories, but only used them as references for providing details. Welty exclaimed, “You can’t make up something fantastic. So I used [the photographs] in the way I might refer to notes” (Cole xvi). Welty’s source material comes from actually seeing life firsthand while we, as second hand viewers, see only a flattened image or reflection of life on the page. For The Ponder Heart, Welty chose several snapshots from her “portfolio,” and not finding everything she wanted there, borrowed a camera and went searching for the perfect images to send to Krush to assist him in his illustrations. A true artist at heart, Welty did not resist assisting in the creation of the illustrations for her book. On September 8, 1953, Welty sent forty-two snapshots to Krush, including detailed instructions regarding possible illustration

Letter from Eudora Welty to Joe Krush. Handwritten note reads, “Of course don’t bother to return—Poor prints, seconds, all, I fear.”

ideas.¹ This information must have been invaluable to an illustrator who more times than not, must rely purely on instinct, close reading of the text, personal experience, or merely guess at what the writer was seeing. In Welty’s letter to Krush, she praises his work on The Ponder Heart dust jacket. Dust jackets, during this time, were printed in what Krush calls “separate color” tradition, which means no full color anywhere on the jacket, and usually only three colors, period. Krush typically hand-lettered his titles, as with The Ponder Heart, to distinguish his work from others (Krush). With Welty’s proactive gesture in assisting Krush, the illustrated Ponder Heart reflects a true image of the world Welty imagined.

Some of the snapshots Welty took with the borrowed camera include descriptions: “Peacock-style, but too well-kept,” “Some touches that Grandpa might have added to his house—? (But this house far too rundown.),” “Hotel-like,” “Peacock style, but this too nice,” “A situation like the Peacock house might have. Right size for house,” “Grandpa Ponder touches on house. Or, for hotel,” and the humorous description that indicates Welty’s delight in her efforts to assist Krush: “I couldn’t find verbena planted in an auto tire in a yard but this is the spirit of it. For Peacocks” (Marrs 133).

One particular snapshot that Welty sent to Krush, titled “Town” (OTOP 50, P 69), appears to be the basis for Krush’s title page illustration...