Pamela Colman Smith (16 February 1878 – 16 September 1951), nicknamed "Pixie", was a British artist, illustrator, writer, publisher, and occultist.

In 1889, they moved to Jamaica when Charles Smith took a job with the West India Improvement Company, a financial syndicate involved in extending the Jamaican railroad system.

[6] Her mature drawing style shows clear traces of the visionary qualities of fin-de-siècle Symbolism and the Romanticism of the preceding Arts and Crafts movement.

In London, she was taken under the wing of the Lyceum Theatre group led by Terry (who is said to have given her the nickname 'Pixie'), Henry Irving, and Bram Stoker and traveled with them around the country, working on costumes and stage design.

[10] Discouraged by The Green Sheaf's lack of financial success, Smith shifted her efforts towards setting up a small press in London.

In 1904, she established The Green Sheaf Press which published a variety of novels, poems, fairy tales, and folktales until at least 1906, mostly by women writers.

[12] Yeats introduced Smith to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which she joined in 1901 and in the process met Arthur Edward Waite.

[13] Apart from book illustration projects and the tarot deck, her art found little in the way of commercial outlets after her early success with Stieglitz in New York.

Several examples of her works done in gouache were collected by her cousin, the American Sherlock Holmes actor William Gillette, and may be found today prominently displayed in his castle in Connecticut.

After the end of the First World War, Smith received an inheritance from an uncle that enabled her to lease a house on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, an area popular with artists.

[15] The 78 illustrations that make up the Waite–Smith Tarot "represent archetypal subjects that each become a portal to an invisible realm of signs and symbols, believed to be channeled through processes of divination."

[16] Recent scholars, recognizing the central importance of Smith's contribution, often refer to the deck as the Waite–Smith Tarot,[17] while others prefer the abbreviation RWS, for Rider–Waite–Smith.

For the pips, it appears that Smith drew mainly on the 15th century Italian Sola Busca tarot;[20] the 3 of Swords, for example, clearly shows the congruity between the two decks.

In addition, there is evidence that some figures in the deck are portraits of Smith's friends, notably actresses Ellen Terry (the Queen of Wands) and Florence Farr (the World).

This is a short period of time for an artist to complete some 80 pictures,[20] the number claimed by Smith in a letter to Stieglitz in 1909 and closely corresponding to the standard 78-card tarot deck.

The exhibition included works by Smith and other women artists who were active in the art and photography scene prior to O'Keeffe.

[25] The exhibition was based on the scholarly book Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle by Kathleen Pyne, which contains a chapter on Smith.

[26] The Brooklyn Campus of the Pratt Institute Libraries mounted the exhibition Pamela Colman Smith: Life and Work in 2019, including books, prints, reproductions of paintings and illustrations, tarot decks, and photographs.