Living in that childish wonder is a most beautiful feeling - I can so well remember it. There was always something more - behind and beyond everything - to me, the golden spectacles were very, very big.

The influence of children's clothes in portraits by British painter John Hoppner (1758–1810) may have provided her some inspiration. Greenaway's paintings were reproduced by chromoxylography by which the colours were printed from hand-engraved wood blocks by the firm of Edmund Evans. A full generation of mothers in the liberal-minded "artistic" British circles who called themselves "The Souls" and embraced the Arts and Crafts movement dressed their daughters in Kate Greenaway pantaloons and bonnets in the 1880s and 1890s.

Catherine Greenaway (17 March 1846 – 6 November 1901) known as Kate Greenaway was an English children's book illustrator and writer.