“While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom”

“While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom” by Howard Pyle (1886)

Another great Howard Pyle composition inside a square (okay: it’s actually 4.1 x 4.8").

“While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom” comes from Thomas Buchanan Read’s The Closing Scene, published by J. B. Lippincott in 1886. It was engraved by Frank French. Pyle made five illustrations for this book and this one, to my mind, is the most interesting: I particularly like his window treatment - the blinds, slightly askew, and the partially-obscured soldiers marching off to war. While it is somewhat “flat” and “posed” and “stiff” (compared to his later, looser works), it's still rock solid - in a very good way.