Floyd MacMillan Davis was a well known illustrator especially noted for his depictions of southern rural hill people. He gave much of the credit for the success of his pictures to the critical judgment of his wife, painter Gladys Rockmore Davis. Floyd Davis point of view, however, was uniquely his own. A gallery of wonderful characters depicted with poetic realism and warm humor peopled his visual world.

The wealth of detail in his pictures would seem to have required much study from models or photos of them. In fact, Davis did not use models at all, but relied instead on his remarkably retentive memory and lively imagination. In his early years, he did advertising illustration notable for the fragile beauty and lofty hauteur of the...