Maud Humphrey

See images to download

Maud Humphrey
Maud Humphrey (1868-1940) was a commercial illustrator, watercolourist and suffragette from the United States. She was the mother of the actor Humphrey Bogart and frequently used her young son as a model.
Maud was born in Rochester, New York in 1868 to John Perkins Humphrey and Frances V. Dewey Churchill. She studied at the Art Students League of New York and the Julian Academy in Paris.  It was there that she studied with James McNeil Whistler, an American artist based mainly in the UK.
She married Belmont DeForest Bogart (1867-1934) and they had one son, Humphrey, and two daughters.

She won a Louis Prang & Co. competition for Christmas card design and then began working for the New York publisher Frederick A. Stokes as an illustrator.  From the 1890s through to the 1920s, her work included child portraits, calendars, greeting cards, postcards, fashion magazines and more than 20 story books.
Her work was used by advertising agencies in campaigns for Anheuser-Busch beer, Butterick Patterns, Crossman Brothers Flower Seeds, Ivory Soap, Mellin Baby Food, Equitable Insurance, and Metropolitan Life Insurance. She earned more than $50,000 a year (roughly $750,000 in 2023 dollars), while her husband's surgical practice brought in $20,000 a year (roughly $300,000 in 2023 dollars).
The Bogart family’s finances, however, were adversely affected by the Great Depression, and also by Dr. Bogart’s failing health and subsequent dwindling medical practice. After the death of her husband, Maud was left with substantial debt from medical and hospital bills. She turned to her son for help. By then, Humphrey Bogart was a successful young Hollywood actor and could afford to move his mother to California where she lived for five years in an apartment on Sunset Boulevard. She adapted to her new surroundings and lifestyle which put her in the same social circles as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Laurence Olivier and other Hollywood celebrities.
During her final years in California, Humphrey focused her creative talents on greeting cards. She died in 1940, at the age of 72 from pneumonia, a complication of cancer.

Images to download

See below to download images from publications illustrated by Maud Humphrey. Click on each item for more information.

8 products