Rosalie and the Tree of Beauty Fairy Tale Card

This particular illustration is from the Old French Fairy Tale collection from the story "The Little Grey Mouse". Rosalie is admiring a marvellous beautiful tree. Virginia Francis Sterrett was commissioned to illustrate a French fairy tale book called "Old French Fairy Tales" (1920) when she was only nineteen. A short time later she came down with Tuberculosis. She also illustrated for "Tanglewood Tales" and "Arabian Nights" before passing away in 1928. "Rosalie saw before her eyes a tree of marvellous beauty, with a coral trunk and leaves of emeralds. The seeming fruits which covered the tree were of precious stones of all colours diamonds, sapphires, pearls, rubies, opals, topazes, all as large as the fruits they were intended to represent and of such brilliancy that Rosalie was completely dazzled by them."