Enjoying the magic of the seasons throughout the year: the exhibition, "Spirit of the Holidays, " illuminates the season with charming, rarely seen examples of Tasha Tudor's original art for greeting cards and children's books created for those special celebrations—from Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's to Valentine's Day, Easter, and Halloween

FAMILY, ART, AND NATURE have been at the center of Tasha Tudor's life for years. Her hard-won success--as an author, artist, illustrator, and parent--is a constant source of pride for the still-working 90-year-old. Rejecting commercial fads and popular opinion, she cultivates the virtues of a simpler existence and exemplifies without pretension a life that many dream of but few understand how to realize.

Tudor continues to produce her signature watercolors at her idyllic, rural Vermont farm, where she has fashioned an intimate world of her own making. The artist's studio is her kitchen, where she sits balancing her work on her lap. Her appreciation for simpler times is reflected in both her style of life and illustration. Tudor long has devoted significant time to the enjoyment of holiday traditions she shares with family and friends. From the illustrations in her first published children's book, Pumpkin Moonshine (1938), Tudor has pursued her interest in depicting holiday stories and scenes.

The exhibition, "Tasha Tudor's Spirit of the Holidays"--on view through Feb. 5 at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass.--illuminates the season with charming, rarely seen examples of the illustrator's original art for greeting cards and children's books created for holiday celebrations, from Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's to Valentine's Day, Easter, and Halloween. Original portraits of Tudor as a girl by her mother, artist Rosamond Tudor, delicate childhood drawings, original handwritten manuscripts, miniature doll cards, hand-decorated boxes and Easter eggs, photographs, and almost 100 first-issue holiday cards dating from the early 1940s onward are among the heartwarming treasures to be enjoyed. Tudor's art reflects the simple pleasures that can be had in life by savoring each passing season, celebrating special days, and cherishing the most fleeting moments.

A companion exhibition, "Tasha Tudor's Spirit of the Holidays at Orchard House"--on view through Feb. 28 at Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House, Concord, Mass.--features Tudor illustrations that graced the pages of the Alcott classic, Little Women. Besides these original watercolors, Orchard House's display includes preliminary pencil drawings from A Round Dozen (an Alcott anthology published posthumously in 1963) and a wide variety of Tudor sketches, prints, notecards, and related items based on her designs.

As an illustrator, Tudor utilized her talents by decorating works of famous children's authors such as Hans Christian Andersen, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kenneth Grahame, Clement Clarke Moore, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In 1963, on the 25th anniversary publication of her first book, Tudor was asked to design the cover, chapter headings, and other illustrations for 12 short stories by Alcott that would appear in A Round Dozen. She captured the essence of these stories by creating a cover that depicted scenes from all 12 in a wreath formation tied with a bow, as if signaling that these tales were a great gift to the reader.

The exhibit displays Tudor's original pencil on tracing paper drawings and, to show the evolution of the cover, from initial sketch to printer's proof and final copy. At the time A Round Dozen was published, Tudor had provided pictures for 37 books and written the text for 17. She returned to Alcott's work in 1969, illustrating Little Women in honor of its centennial anniversary. Tudor spent time around Orchard House, where the book was written, making sketches for reference.

Tasha Tudor was born Starling Burgess on Aug. 28, 1915, in Boston, Mass. Her father, William Starling Burgess, was a noted naval architect and aeronautical engineer. Her mother was an accomplished portrait painter who used her maiden name professionally.

Burgess, or "The Skipper," as he was commonly known, was a master storyteller given to dramatic impromptu performances and a gifted reader of poetry, which he also occasionally wrote. His wife was extremely well-read and deeply interested in the arts. She attended the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, continued her training under several prominent artists, and eventually gravitated toward a more Bohemian lifestyle throughout the world.

Although not as wealthy as some of her friends, Tudor--nicknamed "Tasha" by her father--still led a very proper Bostonian existence, enjoying servants, dancing classes, and afternoon parties. Tudor's parents divorced when she was nine, and she moved with her mother to New York's Greenwich Village, a haven for many artists and writers. Tudor soon went to stay with her Aunt Gwen in Redding, Conn., an atmosphere deemed more suitable for a child.

Tudor lived an unusual childhood, being plunked into circumstances that exposed her to the quite diverse areas of the creative arts and farm life. These youthful experiences left indelible impressions on her, generating passions that have not wavered for the better part of a century. Tudor describes the sudden change in her young life as "the best thing that ever happened to me. We lived on practically nothing but rice and tomatoes, cold cereals, and quickly-put-together meals, as Aunt Gwen was far too wrapped up in writing plays to have time for elaborate cooking. Yet, she often read out loud to us at night--sometimes until 10 or 11 o'clock."