Friday, May 27, 2011

“In the Prison”

Would you like to own Howard Pyle’s “In the Prison” from Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker by S. Weir Mitchell? Now’s your chance.

The original 18 x 25" oil in “part color” is coming up for auction at Freeman’s in Philadelphia on June 19, 2011. It might need a good cleaning, unless Pyle’s pigments have irreversibly darkened over the last 114 years.

This is how it looked when it was first published in The Century Magazine for May 1897. The 5.2 x 7.3" plate (in halftone, but heavily worked over by a human engraver) is a much different animal:

2 comments:

kev ferrara said...

Thanks for the neat Pyle image.

Seems just as likely that Pyle painted this dark and gloomy and the engraver was tasked to lighten it up for publication, and took other liberties in the process. No?

Ian Schoenherr said...

Could be - maybe a conservator will get a hold of it and assess it for real.