At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism | Art & Artists

May 7, 2022–Feb 26, 2023

Exhibition works

22 total
Pamela Colman Smith
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Pamela Colman Smith

Eight Tarot cards illustrated with human figures and natural elements like the sun, plants and sea wave.
Eight Tarot cards illustrated with human figures and natural elements like the sun, plants and sea wave.

Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck, 1909 (printed c. 1920–30). Tarot cards, 78 cards, 4 11/16 × 2 11/16 in. (11.9 × 6.8 cm) each. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Frances Mulhall Achilles Library, Special Collections SC.2021.6.1-80

Pamela Colman Smith

Born 1878 in London, United Kingdom
Died 1951 in Bude, United Kingdom

In 1909, Pamela Colman Smith was commissioned to design a set of seventy-eight tarot cards by A. E. Waite, the leader of the Independent and Rectified Rite of the Golden Dawn, a secret, mystical society to which Smith belonged. Known as the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, it was the first to feature fully illustrated, symbolic images on each card and integrated Judeo-Christian ideas into a visual vocabulary that often drew heavily on occult magic. Stylistically, the designs in the deck reflect the era’s widespread embrace of the sinuous, organic lines of Art Nouveau and the patterned, flowing patterns of Japanese prints. Smith used the style in her tarot cards and in watercolors such as The Wave to suggest the existence of a mystical occult world beyond the visible one.  

Eight Tarot cards illustrated with human figures and natural elements like the sun, plants and sea wave.
Eight Tarot cards illustrated with human figures and natural elements like the sun, plants and sea wave.

Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck, 1909 (printed c. 1920–30). Tarot cards, 78 cards, 4 11/16 × 2 11/16 in. (11.9 × 6.8 cm) each. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Frances Mulhall Achilles Library, Special Collections SC.2021.6.1-80

Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck, 1909 (printed c. 1920–30)

Ghostly human-shaped waves rise from a teal sea under a dark night sky.
Ghostly human-shaped waves rise from a teal sea under a dark night sky.

Pamela Colman Smith, The Wave, 1903. Watercolor, brush and ink, and graphite pencil on paper, sheet: 10 1/4 × 17 3/4 in. (26 × 45.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mrs. Sidney N. Heller 60.42

The Wave, c. 1903

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