“It is a big serious business”

“The class organization that Mr. Pyle suggested at his dinner has been going forward and I am now serving as one of five on a committee for framing a constitution and perfecting some scheme for the school organization.”

So wrote Pyle student Allen Tupper True to his mother on March 29, 1903. “His dinner” was Howard Pyle’s 50th birthday party, held at his Wilmington studio on March 5, 1903. There (as True had told his mother in a previous letter), in addition to the feast and festivities, Pyle had “made a good speech in which he told us of the organization he wanted among us and what hopes he had for the American Art that we were to build.”

“The committee on constitution has its work very nearly done now and we are all a bit proud of what we have done,” True wrote on April 12, 1903. “It is a hard business to get a hold of I find….” And a week later he said, “The work on the Constitution Comm. is about finished and our report will go before the crowd soon…”

The crowd, in this case, were the 18 official or “active members” of “The Howard Pyle School of Art”:

Stanley M. Arthurs
Clifford W. Ashley
William J. Aylward
Arthur E. Becher
Ernest J. Cross
Philip R. Goodwin
George M. Harding
Philip L. Hoyt
James E. McBurney
Gordon M. McCouch
Francis Newton
Thornton Oakley
Samuel M. Palmer
Henry J. Peck
Frank E. Schoonover
Harry E. Townsend
Allen T. True
N. C. Wyeth

(Absent from this list were several other Pyle students who had attended the birthday dinner, but who were not considered members of the school, per se, including Herman Pfeifer, Hermann C. Wall, Frank Bird Masters, and Ethel Franklin Betts. Also absent were Sarah S. Stilwell, Dorothy Warren, and Walter Whitehead, who had studied with Pyle after he resigned from the Drexel Institute. And it should be noted that although Pyle was always willing to critique the work of women artists who sought his advice, “The Howard Pyle School of Art” was strictly men only.)

Eventually, the constitution and by-laws - as well as the text of the song sung at Pyle’s party - were handed over to Wilmington’s John M. Rogers, who was Pyle’s go-to printer for almost a decade. It’s not yet known how many copies were printed, but the copy seen here belonged to Henry J. Peck.

In his March 29, 1903 letter, True had said of the constitution: “It is a big serious business and unless I am mistaken, this organization - whose seeds only we are planting now - will be heard from in coming years and its influence will be decidedly felt in American Art of the future.”

But, as with many of Pyle’s big plans, “The Howard Pyle School of Art” - as a formal organization, at least - lasted only a few years before it fell by the wayside. Yet the Pyle “School” - in the broadest sense of the word - was indeed heard from and its influence was decidedly felt for decades to come.

“This is the last week at the Ford...”

“This is the last week at the Ford and I’ll make the best of it,” wrote N. C. Wyeth to his mother on Sunday, October 18, 1903. “Then back to Wilmington where I hope before I leave again I’ll be doing illustrating galore.”

It was indeed the last week at Chadd’s Ford: after six years, never again would Howard Pyle conduct his “Summer School” there. That very morning he had held his final composition lecture - “an exceptionally fine” one, noted Wyeth, “although my comp. wasn’t up to snuff.”

“Today a friend of Randolphs was out and had a camera,” Wyeth also wrote, referring to the Randolph family of the “Wyndtryst” estate nearby. “He wanted a picture of Mr. Pyle but Mr. Pyle would not be taken alone so took Palmer and I, putting his arms around both of us.”

The result - almost certainly - was the snapshot shown here, although it includes a couple more people than Wyeth mentioned. From left to right are Samuel Morrow Palmer Jr. (28), N. C. Wyeth (about to turn 21), Howard Pyle (50), Allen Tupper True (22), and James Edwin McBurney (34). (Palmer and McBurney, by the way, had studied with Pyle at the Drexel Institute and in 1900 or 1901 Pyle had invited them both to join his newly-formed school of art in Wilmington.)

The five are standing outside Lafayette Hall, where the Pyles lived when summering at “the Ford”. And although it had rained all Saturday and the sky still looks gray in the photograph, on Sunday the weather had cleared, and - as True said in a letter to his mother - sometime after the lecture, or the photo, or both, “we took a long cross country walk and it was great because today has been one of the finest days of the whole year.”

Pyle on Saint-Gaudens’s Sherman Monument

On May 30, 1903, Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Sherman Monument was unveiled at the southeast corner of Central Park in New York City. Although there’s no known evidence that Howard Pyle was present at the ceremony, we do know that he saw it in place within the next few days. Pyle, who delivered an address at Yale University’s School of Fine Arts in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 1, and passed through Manhattan on the way there and back, wrote to Saint-Gaudens on June 4:

I have just returned from New York and I feel that I want to tell you how beautiful I think your Sherman Memorial Statue to be.

It impresses me, as your work always does, as being not only beautiful but great, and I am sure that it is not prejudice upon my part but a matter of calm judgment that leads me to feel that you are easily the leading sculptor in the world today -

I could say more - but will not do so.

Saint-Gaudens’s reply is lost, but Pyle’s letter seems to have reminded him to send a copy of his bronze Robert Louis Stevenson medallion, which he’d promised to give Pyle a year earlier - after Pyle had sent Saint-Gaudens his pen-and-ink drawing “The Song of Peace”. Pyle received it on July 15, 1903, and apparently it’s still owned by his descendants.

A Film About Allen Tupper True

Allen Tupper True

Denver-born artist Allen Tupper True (1881-1955) joined Howard Pyle’s class in May 1902 and his abundant letters home are a rich source of information on Pyle and his students and their lives in and around Chadd’s Ford and Wilmington (they’re also a great complement to True’s classmate and studiomate N. C. Wyeth’s letters to his family).

Now (and for some time past, perhaps) an hour-long documentary called “Allen True’s West” is available on Colorado Public Television’s website. The quality isn't great, but a DVD can also be had.

The film showcases True’s later career as a muralist and touches only slightly on the “Pyle years” (and it’s not without its errors: enrollment to the Howard Pyle School of Art - not the “Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art” - wasn’t limited “to only twelve students” - and Pyle resigned from McClure’s Magazine before the plan to have True join him as an assistant could be realized. Also, it’s implied that Pyle took a cut of the fees his students received for published work, which is incorrect.) Even so, it’s well worth watching and learning more about True’s life and art, which have gotten relatively little attention.

George Harding, Gordon McCouch, Thonton Oakley, N. C. Wyeth, Allen True, and (seated) Howard Pyle, circa 1903

Ticket to Pyle

On December 4, 1903, Howard Pyle and his wife, Anne, traveled from Chicago to Indianapolis via the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway. They arrived at 2:40 p.m. and were met by Will David Howe, a professor of English at Butler College (and later an editor and publisher in New York). Howe had tried to get Pyle to come lecture in Indianapolis in 1902, but the ever-busy Pyle begged off, explaining:

I am not only writing a book [The Story of King Arthur and His Knights] and conducting a class and building a house, but I have so many other engagements ahead of me that I hardly know how I shall carry them. Besides I shall be able next season to give you a much better thought out discourse than I could possible build together this year.

So the plan went on hold until 1903, when Pyle was able to coordinate well-paying visits to both Indianapolis and Chicago in one week-long trip. At the Art Institute of Chicago, he lectured on “The Art of the Age,” met more informally with the instructors and students (including a 19-year-old Harvey Dunn, who would join Pyle’s school the following November), and attended the opening of a one-man-show of some 110 of his pictures.

“As my lecture in Chicago will be more directly addressed to artists it will probably have many practical suggestions which will be well to omit in your lecture,” Pyle informed Howe. “Accordingly I will both concentrate and condense my Chicago words for Indianapolis.”

Unfortunately, no manuscript or transcript “The Art of the Age” has yet turned up, but in describing an earlier version of it Pyle said that he had “endeavored...to explain my understanding of the difference between the Art of the past and the Art that is demanded by the present age.... [and] stated very clearly and concisely my opinion that our age and our times require an art that, if not distinctly different from the Art of the past, is, at least, an adaptation and completion of the art of the past to fit our present needs.”

At any rate, at 8:00 p.m. on December 4th, Pyle “spoke to a large audience in chapel hall at Butler College” - reported the Indianapolis Morning Star - under the auspices of (and, perhaps, restricted to members and guests of) the Irvington Athenaeum. The paper also noted that “Classes were dispensed with and a reception was given Mr. Pyle at the college residence.”

The next evening, Mr. and Mrs. Pyle left Indianapolis on a 6:50 p.m. train. “Our trip home was most comfortable and the six children welcomed us with open arms,” said Anne in a thank-you letter to Howe. And Pyle’s students may have been equally welcoming: “Mr. Pyle is in Chicago,” wrote N. C. Wyeth to his mother, right after the Pyles had embarked on their trip, “and we are left for a whole week to battle alone with our troubles, and when we feel blue we’ll have no kind and powerful guardian to come in and cheer us up.”

Ye Pirate Bold (and Bloody Expensive)

On September 13, 1903, Howard Pyle jotted down this drawing in a little notebook belonging to his student Thornton Oakley. Some years later, when Merle Johnson was compiling Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, Oakley allowed it to be reproduced.

Today, this 5.75 x 3.25" scrap was auctioned off at Freeman’s in Philadelphia. And as a testament to the enduring allure of Pyle’s pirates, it sold - with buyer’s premium - for $20,000!

Insert your favorite piratical expression of shock here.

A. B. Frost to Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle (right) in the summer of 1878 as depicted by his friend and fellow illustrator Arthur Burdett Frost (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, May 1879)

“I would love to go over the old times and the nice little sketching rambles we used to take, when we gathered cat-tails and scared the farmer by waving a big knife at him. I am pretty nearly as vigorous as I was then. I can stand a lot of hard walking with a gun and if it wasn’t for the rheumatism I think I am nearly as tough as I ever was.”

Arthur Burdett Frost to Howard Pyle, February 9, 1903

April Fools from Howard Pyle, Part 4

I’m overwhelmed by fools - Howard Pyle’s fools, I mean: he just drew and painted too many to show all at once. But here’s one more, in yet another medium and style. It’s from “The Castle of Content” by James Branch Cabell (Harper’s Monthly Magazine, August 1903). It was titled “He thought of his love” in the magazine, but was exhibited as “Idleness.“ I saw the original oil a few years ago and noticed that it had been unscrupulously cut down (to fit a frame, probably!) and that the colors of the fool’s tights were reversed. I gather that Pyle, in his haste to finish, forgot which leg was green and which one was red and that the printer corrected his mistake.

Christmas Morn by Howard Pyle, 1903

A number of Howard Pyle's major works are surprisingly under-documented. For example, his painting "Christmas Morn" which was issued as a supplement to the Chicago Tribune for Sunday, December 20, 1903. Its appearance in the newspaper coincided with a major exhibition of Pyle's works at the Art Institute of Chicago, which, in turn, coincided with a couple of lectures Pyle delivered there. The original has yet to appear, but I assume it's a fairly large oil on canvas, which took a fair amount of time to paint. Somehow, though, I've found no mention of it in Pyle's (or anyone else's) correspondence. Then again, the same can be said of another major work - and another depiction of Christ, and practically a companion piece to "Christmas Morn" - called "Why Seek Ye the Living Among the Dead" which appeared in Collier's Weekly for April 15, 1905.

December 4, 1903

“...In discussing ‘American Art’ at the Art Institute yesterday afternoon Howard Pyle, the illustrator, urged American artists to be American and to give full sway to their creative powers. Thought and imagination, as against technique, were emphasized. Western artists were praised for their spirit and enthusiasm, but Mr. Pyle said that he did not think they produced the best there is in them. He hinted that this was due to the way in which the Art Institute is directing their work....”

Chicago Record-Herald, December 4, 1903