Revisiting a prodigy.(Endnotes)

Seventy-five years ago this month, and actually quite often in those early days. ANTIQUES broke one of the cardinal rules of magazine publishing. It ran a front cover that had absolutely nothing to do with the contents inside. By the time that September 1933 issue appeared, however, ANTIQUES's loyal readers were already well-informed about William James Hubard, the "infant phenomenon" who was responsible for the silhouette illustrated on the cover. In October 1923 (less than two years after the magazine started publication in January 1922) Alice Van Leer Carrick wrote "Notes on Master Hubard," which not only provided important corrections to the existing record about this child prodigy but also set the stage for her fuller account of his life in Shades of Our Ancestors, which was published in 1928.

Several other articles about Hubard also appeared in ANTIQUES before that 1933 cover--in 1924, 1925, 1927, and 1928. In June 1929 and October 1931 the indefatigable researcher Mabel M. Swan penned two articles that revealed his talents not just as a silhouettist but also as a painter and sculptor, lamenting a little that "few have had their lesser works," as she called the silhouettes, "so much admired and their more important ...