ARTHUR BURDETTE (A.B.) FROST
(1851 - 1928)

A. B. was born in Philadelphia and grew up watching and participating in many hunting experiences. His love of the sport and his intimate knowledge of nature combined to make him one of the foremost illustrators of American rural and small-town life at the turn of the century. Frost studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and spent his summers fishing, rowing, and hunting ducks and snipe. In his drawings there was a directness and honesty, which showed his sympathetic understanding of his subject. He completed hundreds of watercolors and oils of the New Jersey seaside and is probably best known for his hunting and shooting prints created in realistically detailed woodland or marsh scenes that capture the drama of the sport.

Frost had built a career as an illustrator for books and magazines when Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll, asked him to provide artwork for a book of poems. The two began a tumultuous professional relationship that ended badly due to Dodgson's uncompromising critiques.

Frost is perhaps best known for the illustrations he provided for Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit books, but over a career of more than fifty years he created innumerable drawings and paintings for such authors as Theodore Roosevelt and magazines such as Harper's Weekly, Scribner's and Life. He was known for the utterly convincing detail of his illustrations. Frost's wife also painted and worked with him at Harper's. The poet Robert Frost was a distant cousin.