Before there were Labubus, or Precious Moments, or Holly Hobby, or Cabbage Patch Kids, or Hummel figurines, there were Sunbonnet Babies: a pair of chubby twin toddlers in sweet pink and yellow dresses, their faces entirely hidden by frilly white sunbonnets.
The woman who created the Sunbonnet Babies empire was a skilled and talented artist and a successful entrepreneur at a time when most women had little agency. She was also a Topanga homesteading pioneer and an early advocate for teaching children compassion and appreciation for the natural world, but her creations completely overshadowed her during her lifetime, obscuring all of her other attainments. Everywhere she went and everything she did that was newsworthy, from entering paintings in exhibitions, to having her first child, and even moving to a new home and filing for divorce, was preceded by the title “the creator of the Sunbonnet Babies,” or “the Sunbonnet Babies artist.”
Bertha Louise Corbett was born in Colorado in 1872. Her father was a sign painter in Leadville, Colorado, where Bertha, her sister Jessie, and brother William lived as children. The family moved to Minneapolis in the 1880s. Bertha enrolled in the brand new Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts in 1889, at the age of 17, and went on to study art at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry, in Philadelphia, where celebrated American illustrator Howard Pyle was beginning his career as an art teacher.
Bertha’s passion was portraiture, but her goal was to become a commercial artist, and she quickly found success as an illustrator. She created her first sunbonnet baby illustrations around 1897, and self-published a book featuring the faceless twin tots in 1899, having already made a success with her creations in ads and on greeting cards.
In 2010, Moira F. Harris wrote an extensive article on the artist for Minnesota History, the publication of the Minnesota Historical Society. In it, she chronicles how Bertha sent her self-published book to publishers, and attracted the interest of Edwin Osgood Grover, an editor at Rand McNally, Chicago, who introduced her to his sister, Eulalie, a former elementary school teacher. Eulalie Osgood Grover wrote the text for the Sunbonnet Babies books, Corbett provided the illustrations.
Their first collaboration, The Sunbonnet Babies Primer, featured sun-bonneted tots May and Mollie, their dogs and cat, and a variety of activities, from playing with their pets, to chores and games around the house and garden. It was an instant success, and soon became a popular elementary school textbook for young readers.
The adventurous tots were joined by their male counterparts, the “Overall Boys” and sent out into the world on a series of adventures. The books were a major success for the author, but the illustrator did not fare as well. She was paid only a flat fee for each book and did not receive royalties.
Harris writes, “In 1908, clearly unhappy with the arrangement, [Bertha] wrote editor Edwin Grover, asking for either a flat fee of $2,500 per book or a 10-percent per-copy royalty. She pointed out, ‘The pictures being the cause and keynote of the book, if it sells, as it undoubtedly will, I feel this is right.’”
Bertha continued to illustrate the Sunbonnet Babies book series for Rand McNally—nine in total—but she also worked with other publishers and manufacturers, and she started her own company to promote and market her creations. Sunbonnet Babies became a merchandising juggernaut. They appeared in advertisements and on postcards, greeting cards, and calendars. There were dolls and toys, baby books and activity books, and porcelain collectables. There was even a syndicated comic strip that appeared in papers all over the country.
By 1908, Corbett was traveling the west, giving talks and drawing demonstrations for Santa Fe Railroad at inns along the train route, and at women’s clubs, libraries and schools. During a stay in California, she entered a fine art painting into a Los Angeles exhibition. It drew the attention of fellow artist George Henry Melcher, who proclaimed the work the highlight of the show.
George Melcher was gaining a reputation as a landscape painter who captured the wild beauty of Southern California in his work, but he was also a Topanga homesteader who had staked a claim on 120 acres in 1907, and raised chickens and goats to augment his income as artist. Sometimes, when money was short, he also did a stint as a sign painter, just like Bertha’s father and grandfather. Henry spent his days working his land, hiking in the hills, and painting in the Santa Monica Mountains back country.
In 1910, Bertha—now a Pasadena resident—was camping in Topanga not far from George’s homestead. The two met and fell in love. Was the meeting synchronicity or had they corresponded and struck up a long distance friendship over the past two years? Either way, they wasted no time. They were married a few weeks later.
Bertha was 38 when she met George, a confirmed “spinster.” George was either recently divorced or a recent widower at the time of their meeting. He had married an English-born woman named Amie Rosaline Foreman just two years earlier and brought her to live on his Topanga homestead. There is no indication of whether his first wife left or died.
“A very quiet wedding was solemnized in Los Angeles on August 5, 1910, when Miss Bertha Corbett, the famous “Sunbonnet Baby’ artist, became the bride of George Henry Melcher of Topanga Canyon…the honeymoon is being passed at ‘Roseneath,’ the ranch of Mr Melcher in the canyon, where they will pursue their art and in the fall will give an exhibition.”
Conditions were primitive—the Topanga Historical Society publication The Topanga Story describes the house as a tent cabin—but Bertha delighted in the beauty and peace that surrounded her. The early years of their marriage were highly productive for both artists. They worked together, sharing studio space.
Corbett did the illustrations for several of the Sunbonnet Babies books during those first years in Topanga, and both artists submitted their work to exhibitions. Although the Sunbonnet Babies continued to overshadow her other accomplishments, Corbett began to build a name for herself as a miniature painter.
The couple’s first child, Charlotte Roseneath Melcher, was born on May 3, 1911. The Topanga Story recounts that Charlotte was born at the Topanga homestead with the help of friend and neighbor Manuela Trujillo. Bertha’s sister Jessie came to live with them during this time, presumably to help with the new baby. Newspaper accounts suggest that Bertha was ill for a long time after the birth of Charlotte, but she was well enough to be back at chores a year later, when her horse panicked, lost its footing, and fell into the steep ravine below the road, “dragging the wagon after it,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
The Topanga Story provides a more detailed account, describing how Bertha and her baby were “thrown clear.” Charlotte was unhurt, but Bertha was badly bruised. Jessie, who had climbed down to calm the horse seconds before the accident, ran for help and returned with neighbor Mort Allen, who was able to hoist Bertha and the baby back up the cliff to safety. The horse was not as fortunate. It broke its neck in the fall.
Bertha and George’s second child, Ruth Corbett Melcher, was born in 1915, at the new Van Nuys Sanatorium. The world was changing, even for the remote and isolated population of Topanga.
Bertha was extremely productive the year of Ruth’s birth. She illustrated The Sunbonnet Babies in Holland, submitted miniature paintings to the Panama–Pacific International World Exposition in San Francisco, and illustrated a children’s book about the expo.
Bertha loved the peace and quiet of the canyon. She said in an interview that it was “so quiet there that you could hear the stars twinkling,” and described the drive from the canyon into Santa Monica as “a continuous unfolding of wondrous beauty,” but life there wasn’t easy.
The couple considered moving into town in 1919. An item in the Evening Vanguard states that “Mrs. Bertha Corbett Melcher, creator of the Sunbonnet Babies, and her husband, George Melcher, also an artist, are planning to move from their Topanga canyon home, where they have lived for eight years,” adding that, “They were seeking to demonstrate a theory that the wilds is the best place to rear children in early life.”
They ended up staying in the canyon. Both children went to the little one room school house in the canyon instead of to a bigger school in Santa Monica. Their childhood was one of rural pleasures and labors, and they grew up doing farm chores and exploring the canyon.
Bertha produced Sunbonnet Baby illustrations throughout her time in Topanga, and she continued to give what she called “chalk talks.” She also visited schools and hospitals and did charity events for the war effort during WWI. Sometimes she wrote poetry and she also submitted a couple of articles on life in Topanga that appeared in the 1920s, and were reprinted by the Topanga Journal in the 1950s, after her death. However, despite an active professional and family life—or perhaps because of it—Bertha’s marriage began to unravel.
A news item in the January 8, 1924 Los Angeles Times reported that Bertha was filing for divorce, alleging verbal abuse from her husband that caused her to become ill and require hospitalization. The Melchers appear to have patched up their relationship. In 1928 Bertha published a book of illustrations and poems called What’s on the Air, an unusual collection of drawings and poems written in celebration of the wireless radio. She explained that she had been ill for a long time and isolated in Topanga and that the radio was a lifeline for her. Later that year, Bertha and George had a joint showing of their art at the Santa Monica Library.
In 1933, the marriage was over. Bertha went to live with her daughter Ruth and sister Jessie in West Hollywood. The Hollywood Citizen News reported the news, but said only that the artist had recently moved to the Hollywood area from Topanga, and that “she is known for her happy, optimistic outlook, despite poor health that has confined her to her home for several years.”
The illness Bertha experienced isn’t named, but she never fully recovered from it, whatever it was. In later life she developed crippling arthritis that limited her ability to create art but did not diminish her creative spirit. She rarely left home but she corresponded regularly with friends and fans of her work.
An entire generation of American children learned to read using The Sunbonnet Babies Primer. Her characters were instantly recognizable and continued to be part of American pop culture for decades. The title “creator of the Sunbonnet Babies” stuck to the end, appearing in news stories about her death.
George continued to pursue his own painting career and he remarried in 1934, but he saved a collection of newspaper cuttings about Bertha, and shared them with the editor of the Topanga Journal after Bertha’s death. Among them is a quote from Bertha in a 1928 Evening Outlook article: “My mother always told me never to make faces and tell stories and now I am doing both. It has always been my ambition to achieve success in portraiture but the only thing which has brought me fame is the Sunbonnet Babies who have no faces at all.”
Sunbonnet Babies had a renaissance of popularity in the 1970s, and they live on as a popular quilting design called “Sunbonnet Sue,” but the woman who created them is now mostly forgotten, except perhaps in Topanga, where she is remembered as a good neighbor and a good person. There’s a photo of her with her children in the Topanga Historical Society archives entitled not “the creator of the Sunbonnet Babies,” but simply “Mountain Madonna.”
