Featured 1911 Watercolor on cardboard - artist?

Ah, it does seem like your piece is a copy of the magazine cover and the dates fit perfectly for that, too. Great that you found the cover, Bev!

If the magazine was only sold within MA, or maybe New England, that would probably narrow the artist's location to New England.

 

Many older people retire to Orleans and their houses get cleaned out when they die or go into a nursing home. Could be from MA or CT or NJ or anywhere.

 

Why do you think this is not the original art for that cover? What makes you think this is by Alice Beard? The Boston Post folded in 1956, but there must be an archive. Maybe contacting the Boston central library would help. If you could cajole someone into looking, there's probably an artist credit inside the magazine. Strangely, the Wikipedia entry on the Boston Post features this cover.

 

There are slight differences and the cover was on the Sept. 1910 magazine. Ours is an original watercolor, but dated 1911. If you enlarge the cover, up near the top left of the illustration in faint letters you can see "Alice Beard"

 

I found it by googling magazine illustrators then refined it to baby mermaids and the Wikipedia entry popped up.

 

September 18 was a Sunday in 1910, not in 1911, still... it could be a copy of the painting by the same artist "on demand" so to speak. It's darn slick for a copyist.

 

DARN slick!