“I am growing so old now...”

Howard Pyle’s summer home in 1911: Villa Torricella, San Domenico, Florence, Italy

“This is now the first of June, and two weeks hence we shall be out in the country, and I long to get there and to enjoy the luxury of an American furnished house with Italian belongings, and the fine large secluded studio that I shall have. I hope I shall have work to do, but I am pretty far away for that, and I find it difficult to keep myself busy. On the whole it is a very good thing, for it stimulates my imagination, and braces me up to the old effort of making what I do tell as much as possible. But I am growing so old now that I find the strain of imagination is a little depressing to me, and I must keep up my great expenses or else rapidly fall behind.”

Howard Pyle to Stanley Arthurs, June 1, 1911