In 1776 - The Conflagration

Behold Howard Pyle’s exquisitely delicate depiction of the fire that destroyed part of lower Manhattan 240 years ago.

He made this pen and ink drawing - most likely in the winter of 1892-93 - as a headpiece for Thomas A. Janvier’s two-part article on “The Evolution of New York” (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1893), and he must have used this 1730s engraving - “A View of Fort George with the City of New York from the SW.” - as reference.

"The Old Violin" and a "New" Pyle Student

"The Old Violin" by Howard Pyle (1893)

Next week, one of my favorite Howard Pyle paintings will be sold by Heritage Auctions. It's "The Old Violin" in black and white oil on board. Although it's said to measure 11 x 7 inches, it's probably closer to 12 x 8 inches.

Heritage dates it 1894, but as a matter of fact Pyle painted it in the spring or summer of 1893 for Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes' The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, which was issued by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., in the fall of that year. Pyle seems to have been particularly fond of this picture, because he presented it to his close friend Winthrop Saltonstall Scudder (1847-1929), longtime head of the publisher's art department.

The painting was later made available as a "Copley Print" by Curtis & Cameron. A long time ago, I found a much-faded example of one, which had been signed in pencil by Pyle.

It's really just a photograph of the painting - and the edges of the original board are visible at the margins. It was crudely mounted on cardboard on which was glued a tantalizing typed statement.

Interesting! But who wrote it? Well, on lifting the print from the cardboard, I discovered this, scrawled on the back:

"This print was autographed / for me by the artist, Howard / Pyle, while I was studying / art under him at Wilmington / Del., in October 1910. / Louis D. Gowing"

Somehow, until this print came to light, Louis Daniel Gowing (1884-1967) had successfully avoided inclusion on lists of Pyle's students. Granted, he spent only a few weeks under Pyle’s tutelage, but those with even less exposure to Pyle claimed him as their teacher. Even before joining the "art colony" in Wilmington, Gowing's work had a distinctly Pylean flavor, so it's no wonder he sought the help of the master.

It's quite possible that Gowing was among the 20 or so students who gathered at Pyle's studio to wish him bon voyage - and present him with a pair of binoculars - on the morning of November 21, 1910, the day before he sailed to Italy. (And, incidentally, Winthrop Scudder also saw the Pyles off when their ship stopped in Boston on November 23rd.)

A Howard Pyle Tiffany Window

In 1893, Howard Pyle designed a stained-glass window which was to be fabricated by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company.

“Designed” might not be the precise word: Pyle didn’t so much design the window as paint a picture that was, in essence, “translated” by Tiffany’s stained-glass artisans.

The window was destined for - and, presumably, commissioned by - the Colonial Club of New York, which had moved into a handsome new building on Broadway and 72nd Street the previous year. The subject was Anthony Van Corlaer, and the work has generally been known by the title “Antony Van Corlear [sic], the Trumpeter of New Amsterdam”. Then again, it could be argued that the “official” title is that which Pyle lettered on the work itself:

ANTONIVS VAN CORLEARVS TVBIC
EN PRO NOVELLO AMSTERDAMO

(That title might not be too reliable, however: “My Latin is very loose,” Pyle later wrote (in reference to a mistake in the first printing of his Story of King Arthur), “and I am afraid that I always depend too much on the text reader to help me with that - as well as with my dreadful spelling.”)

At any rate, Pyle seems to have been proud of his painting: on March 18, 1893 he welcomed invited guests to his Wilmington studio to take a look at it before it was shipped off. It was subsequently shown at the Tiffany studios, 333 Fourth Avenue, New York, February 25-26, 1897, and at the First Annual Exhibition of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, May 2-31, 1898.

But the painting has since gone missing. We can take a look at it, however, courtesy of an article on “Window Making as an Art” by William H. Thomas in The Munsey Magazine for December 1901.

Granted, it’s in black and white, but at least we can see the general scheme - not to mention a great many of the painterly details that were “lost in translation” - perhaps because they were deemed unnecessary or impossible to replicate in glass. (Note, for instance, Pyle’s rendering of the boots.)

The window was completed and installed in a Colonial Club stairway sometime that year or the next. The American Architect and Building News for December 29, 1894 described it thus:

At the head of the first flight is a Tiffany window, quite expressive of the Club - Antony Van Corlear sits jovial, surrounded by laughing maidens, who fill his glass and flatter his bachelor vanity, while in the tablets on either side we read the tale, as set forth in the “Knickerbocker’s History”:

“But it was a moving sight
To see ye buxom lasses;
How they hung about ye Doughty
Antony Van Corlear;
For he was a jolly rosy-faced
Lusty bachelor
Fond of his joke and withal
A desperate rogue among ye women!”

A humorous and pleasing thing to greet one on entering the Club!

But in 1903 the clubhouse went into foreclosure and over the next century the building underwent a series of modifications and renovations before ultimately being demolished in 2007.

Fortunately, the window weathered these storms: somewhere along the line it was removed and on March 30, 1984 it was auctioned by Christie’s in New York and purchased by the Delaware Art Museum. It measures 65.5 x 39.5 inches, and Pyle’s painting most likely is - or was - of similar dimensions. Maybe it weathered some storms, too, and will show up one day.

“The Good Old Doctor”

Howard Pyle illustrated two books by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes for the 1891 and 1892 holiday seasons, so it was only natural that the publisher, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., would want him to illustrate the one slated for 1893.

Pyle, though, had second thoughts: this was around the time he declared that he “intended to do no book illustrations, except in connection with [his] own writings.” But Art Editor Winthrop Scudder - who was also Pyle’s close friend - urged him to take on the project. In a letter of January 24, 1893, Scudder wrote:

You are probably aware that in our plans for the coming year the Autocrat has taken the first place. In other words, this is our leading book. If it is not illustrated by you I fear it will have to take a much less prominent place in the line. You are in such perfect sympathy with Dr. Holmes, not only on his literary side, but on the humorous as well, that I have felt from the beginning that your work on this book would give you a great deal of pleasure, delight the good old doctor, and satisfy the general public, who are so well acquainted with the Autocrat.

Despite his reservations, Pyle accepted - and wound up doing 59 illustrations for the two-volume set, including 15 full-page paintings (such as this and this). Two of the latter group which haven’t gotten much attention are the portraits of Dr. Holmes shown here. Both have a distinctly (and no doubt deliberately) photographic look, and although Pyle didn’t make exact copies of photos, he did indeed adapt some. Like this daguerreotype:

And since this daguerreotype (like most) produced a mirror image of its subject, Pyle wisely reversed Dr. Holmes in his painting:

Stamford’s Soprano

In the early 1890s, when Howard Pyle was very much under the literary spell of his friend W. D. Howells, he wrote a handful of “realist” stories set in contemporary America. “Stamford’s Soprano” was one. It came out in Harper's Weekly for June 24, 1893, with the untitled illustration shown here. The original painting - I assume black and white oil on board - is still somewhere in the ether.

Interestingly, Howells wrote to Pyle: “Stamford’s Soprano is very neat and fine; but I like your psychical things best; not that I think you oughtn’t to do all the kinds you like; all you do pleases me.”

Skipping ahead to November 12, 2014...

Since posting this, the original painting has surfaced and is set to be sold by Heritage Auctions in New York on November 17, 2014. The oil on canvas laid on board measures 19 1/8 x 13 7/8 inches (48.6 x 35.2 cm) and is, of course, “a damned fine thing” (as Vincent Van Gogh might say).

What, Do You Think You’re Dewing?

“Thereupon the poor woman screamed aloud, and cried out that he was a Murderer” from the short story “Retribution” by Howard Pyle in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for April 1893.

This bears more than just a superficial resemblance to Thomas Wilmer Dewing at his ethereal foggiest. Of course, the overall effect owes much to the wood engraver F. H. Wellington, who may well have struggled to capture Pyle’s subtle shifts in tone on a 6.8 x 4.8" block. But still...

One day the original black and white oil will surface and then we can really see how it compares with, for example, Dewing’s “Summer” (1890) or “The Song” of 1891, or “In the Garden” (1892-94). The two artists had friends in common and must have been aware of each other’s work, but I have yet to find evidence that puts them in the same place at the same time.

The Professor in His Boat, 1893

Look out, Thomas Eakins! Howard Pyle’s “The Professor in His Boat” - an 8 x 12" black and white oil painted in 1893 and printed (at a mere 2.9 x 4.5") in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press, 1894). Amazing in so many ways - and needlessly neglected.

I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay are smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after me like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining for many a long rood behind me. To lie still over the Flats, where the waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling and the sculpins gliding busily and silently beneath the boat...