ROSE SEIDKIN (HASKINS) b. 1893 — Stage Struck, 1910

Pen and India ink on tan card; Signed, “Rose Seidkin ’10”; Rose Seidkin was a precocious artist who, as she was graduating from a San Francisco high school, worked as an illustrator for a major newspaper. Her work superficially resembles that of Charles Dana Gibson, the Massachusetts born illustrator whose first drawings appeared in 1886. However, where Gibson’s drawings fetishize the “Gibson Girl,” and sleek fin-de-siècle beauty, Seidkin takes liberties closer to the vérité of Lautrec, or Forain. There are layers of meaning revealed in her accomplished line work. In “Stage Struck,” a young woman in a plain suit and dowdy hat looks on as a mustachioed pianist plays a tune (a Scott Joplin rag?) and an upper class impresario in a top hat and tails leans on the piano. She is surrounded by sophisticated women, but she is “Stage Struck!”; A fine drawing by the artist, “When Women Vote, After Dinner the Girls Will Have to Listen to Politics,” was recently acquired by the new Lucas Museum opening in 2026.