Clarence Coles Phillips was an American illustrator working during the “Golden Age” of illustration, just before and after the turn of the 20th century.
Though his approach was not limited to the concept, he was known in particular for his series of illustrations called “Fade-away Girl”, in which he played with negative space and found multiple ways of defining a figure without actually delineating an edge.
For more, see my 2007 post on Coles Phillips.