“A mug, a pipe and a pleasant Friend or two”

In his 1918 history of New York City’s venerable Salmagundi Club, club librarian William Henry Shelton recalled a proposal he had made at the turn of the last century “which was the beginning of one of the most interesting customs of the club and one which has furnished the library with an ample income from that day to this.”

The idea suggested was that twenty-four mugs or steins be decorated each year and sold at auction at the library dinner for the benefit of the library. Each member of the club at that time had his own private mug, decorated by himself, or for him by a professional friend, with his name burned in under the glaze at the Volkmar Pottery. These suggested the library mugs, and limiting the yearly output for the library sale was a plan to keep up prices.

Although Howard Pyle was not a particularly active Salmagundian, he decorated at least two such mugs, the first in 1902 (which I discussed here) and the second on Saturday, December 30, 1905. We know the exact date because he hand-lettered it thus:

A mug, a pipe and a pleasant friend or two. Pray God send me the three. Drawn by Howard Pyle Dec. 30, 1905.

It’s not clear, however, if Pyle did his decorating at the club itself or in Wilmington and then shipped the unfired mug to New York, just as Edwin Austin Abbey (and perhaps other out-of-town contributors) had done. Pyle may well have been in New York that day - either to lecture at the Art Students’ League, and/or to hammer out his plan to take over McClure’s Magazine’s art department - but I have yet to find corroborating evidence.

At any rate, the mug was finally auctioned off on April 17, 1906. Shelton remembered:

There was a sharp contest in the bidding for the Abbey mug and also for a mug by Howard Pyle. Mr. George A. Hearn had sent in a bid of two hundred and fifty dollars for the Abbey mug. The two coveted pieces of delft, however, went into Mr. Saltus’s collection, the Abbey for four hundred and sixty-one dollars and the Pyle for two hundred and sixty dollars. This was real bidding, which was not always the case, as, for instance, in the following year a mug decorated by F. Luis Mora sold at the dinner-table for five hundred and five dollars. This was a sum sent over by Mr. Saltus, who was then in Nice, with the simple direction, “Buy me a mug.” He wished to place that sum in the library and he wished to do it in his own way. As it was known that he always wished his undivided contribution to be expended for one mug, it was the custom to begin the sale by offering the first choice, and when these large sums had to be expended on one mug there was an amusing competition of irresponsible bids, by such of us as were in the secret, until the desired sum was reached.

A syndicated news item about the sale noted that “Mr. Howard Pyle’s mug shows the fat and rosy face of an old time drinker and smoker.” And The New York Times of April 18, 1906, said, “Howard Pyle’s contribution shows the round, rosy face of a high roller of olden days, who looks as if he enjoyed his pipe and the flowing bowl.”

A number of the mugs J. Sanford Saltus purchased were given back to the club, but this one fell through the cracks and its present whereabouts are a mystery. Let’s just hope it didn’t fall on the floor.

The photo above - from the Salmagundi Club’s mug record book - is the only one that I’ve seen.

The Queen of Ireland seeks to slay Sir Tristram

A semi-desperate attempt on my part to post something “Irish” on this St. Patrick’s Day: “The Queen of Ireland seeks to slay Sir Tristram” comes from Howard Pyle’s second volume of his Arthuriad, The Story of the Champions of the Round Table, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1905.

As far as I know, the original pen-and-ink has yet to surface on the market or in a museum. It’s an interesting composition and it takes some staring at to make sense of what’s going on. Or one could simply read the passage it illustrates:

Now whilst Sir Tristram was in that bath, the Queen [of Ireland] and Belle Isoult looked all about his chamber. And they beheld the sword of Sir Tristram where it lay, for he had laid it upon the bed when he had unlatched the belt to make himself ready for that bath. Then the Queen said to the Lady Belle Isoult, “See what a great huge sword this is,” and thereupon she lifted it and drew the blade out of its sheath, and she beheld what a fair, bright, glistering sword it was. Then in a little she saw where, within about a foot and a half from the point, there was a great piece in the shape of a half-moon broken out of the edge of the sword; and she looked at that place for a long while. Then of a sudden she felt a great terror, for she remembered how even such a piece of sword as that which had been broken off from that blade, she had found in the wound of Sir Marhaus of which he had died. So she stood for a while holding that sword of Sir Tristram in her hand and looking as she had been turned into stone. At this the Lady Belle Isoult was filled with a sort of fear, wherefore she said, “Lady, what ails you?” The Queen said, “Nothing that matters,” and therewith she laid aside the sword of Sir Tristram and went very quickly to her own chamber. There she opened her cabinet and took thence the piece of sword-blade which she had drawn from the wound of Sir Marhaus, and which she had kept ever since. With this she hurried back to the chamber of Sir Tristram, and fitted that piece of the blade to the blade; and lo! it fitted exactly, and without flaw.

Upon that the Queen was seized as with a sudden madness; for she shrieked out in a very loud voice, “Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” saying that word three times. Therewith she snatched up the sword of Sir Tristram and she ran with great fury into the room where he lay in his bath. And she beheld him where he was there all naked in his bath, and therewith she rushed at him and lashed at him with his sword. But Sir Tristram threw himself to one side and so that blow failed of its purpose. Then the Queen would have lashed at him again or have thrust him through with the weapon; but at that Gouvernail and Sir Helles ran to her and catched her and held her back, struggling and screaming very violently. So they took the sword away from her out of her hands, and all the while she shrieked like one gone entirely distracted.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

A Howard Pyle Proto-Selfie

Howard Pyle’s 1906 Self-Portrait (Collection of the National Academy of Design)

Howard Pyle took lots and lots of photographs - at least according to his daughter Eleanor - but I don’t know if he ever took the equivalent of a “selfie.” That is, unless you count the ones he “took” in ink and paint.

Pyle’s earliest known self-portraits date from 1884 and decorated his verse “Serious Advice” in Harper’s Young People; the last known one came along over two decades later.

In May of 1905, Pyle was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design and was required to present a self-portrait to its permanent collection. Francis Davis Millet (who had notified Pyle of his election) assured him that “a portrait head is all that is needed & this isnt difficult for you, one of the pupils would be glad of the chance, I know.”

But Pyle didn’t get one of his pupils to do it - and he didn’t get around to doing it himself for almost a year. “I had thought ere this to have had the portrait in your hands,” wrote Pyle to the clerk of the Academy on April 16, 1906, “but many things have intervened to interfere with my purpose.”

At the time, Pyle was deep into his Art-Editorship of McClure’s Magazine and his large picture of “The Battle of Nashville” - but somehow he managed to deliver the painting on April 25th.

It’s funny, though, that - to my mind, at least - Pyle’s less “serious” self-portraits resemble him more than this one does. I assume he used a mirror in the making of it, so I flopped the painting and parked it in between photos taken in 1902 and 1906, and 1907 and 1910.

As you can see, the eyes and pince-nez are almost identical to the photo immediately to the right (which, I confess, I photoshopped to remove his hand), but Pyle doesn’t quite capture his slight underbite, nor the proportions of his mouth, nor the shape of his nose, and so on.

Then again, Pyle was a reluctant or resistant portrait painter - this despite the fact that he incorporated plenty of portraiture into his illustrations: just look at his depictions of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, or Oliver Wendell Holmes. The challenge of capturing the likeness and personality and spirit of someone seated directly in front of him (or reflected in a mirror) seems more than Pyle could handle. As he told his friend Cass Gilbert in a 1910 letter, shortly after sending what he considered to be a failed portrait of Mrs. Gilbert, “I do not like portrait painting; indeed, I hate it.”

Pyle used to do that to his paintings now and then

I spent Friday in the Delaware Art Museum’s library and among the many things I looked at (again) were three enormous, leather-bound scrapbooks of Howard Pyle’s published work.

Pyle and his secretary Gertrude Brincklé seem to have started compiling them in 1910. The first leaves of Volume I feature Pyle’s own handwritten comments about some of his earliest printed things. But then he either lost interest, got distracted or too busy, or left for Italy, so Miss Brincklé must have done the bulk of the finding, trimming, gluing, and annotating. Most of her notes - besides basic bibliographical ones - concern the known owners of particular pictures and if she had posed for any of them. However (as I mentioned in my last post) she also wrote beneath at least a half dozen reproductions the disturbing words, “Destroyed by H.P.” or “Destroyed by Mr. Pyle”.

Now, in the course of my Pyle research I’ve been putting together the skeleton of a very rudimentary catalogue raisonnée (well, a checklist) of his pictures, so it’s always good to know where things have wound up. But it’s never pleasant to learn that certain things have been lost for good. I suppose that if Pyle considered his actions “justifiable picturacide” then we should accept the fate of what he deemed unworthy. Plenty of artists have done what he did, after all... But would if I could go back in time and rescue these from the trash or the furnace or wherever he disposed of them - despite their faults and Pyle’s low opinion.

Anyway, here’s a little memorial gallery for these six gone-but-not-fogotten paintings.

“He climbed the stairs slowly, for he was growing feeble”

From “The Story of Adhelmar” by James Branch Cabell
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1904

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“Catherine de Vaucelles, in her garden”

From “In Necessity’s Mortar” by James Branch Cabell
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, October 1904

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“I know thy heart, that thou dost love me well”

From “The King’s Jewel” by James Edmund Dunning
Harper’s Weekly, December 10, 1904

Note: next to Miss Brincklé’s “Destroyed by Mr. Pyle" someone wrote a question mark, so maybe this one escaped the axe, after all?

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“A man lay prone there, half turned upon his face” also known as “After the Battle”

From “Melicent” by Warwick Deeping
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, January 1905

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“Sir John shook his spear at the ladies who sneered”

From “Melicent” by Warwick Deeping
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, January 1905

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“With a cry, Shallum flung up his arms and jumped” also known as “A Leap from the Cliff”

From “An Amazing Belief” by Mrs. Henry Dudeney
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1905

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Ave atque vale!

Pyle, Taft, and the Panama Canal

On January 5, 1905, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Pyle attended the Cabinet Dinner at the White House, where they dined on Harlequin Sandwiches, Potage Clear Green Turtle, Curled Celery, Terrapin à la Baltimore, Supreme of Chicken Villeroi with fresh mushrooms, Egyptian Quails à l'Estouffade - among other delicacies - and later stayed over night as guests of President Roosevelt.

Also at the dinner was Secretary of War William Howard Taft. After Taft was elected in 1908, Pyle wrote to congratulate him and said:

...I remember sitting at a small table in the White House with you and Mr. Cadwalader after the Cabinet dinner, and hearing you tell Mr. Cadwalader of your intentions concerning the Panama Canal. What you said to Mr. Cadwalader was said so simply and so unaffectedly that I carried away with me the impression that you were one of the strongest men in the world.

Pyle told others of his encounter with Taft that night - Edward Noble Vallandigham, for one, recalled of his friend Pyle:

He became some years ago an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Roosevelt, and was several times entertained at the White House. Upon one of these occasions he met Mr. Taft, then of the cabinet, heard him talk of the Panama Canal, and came away deeply impressed with his easy mastery of a great subject. “He seemed,” said Pyle, “as familiar with that vast undertaking as I should be with the laying of a drain in my back yard.”

Pyle’s enthusiasm for Taft - which seems to have been kindled 108 years ago tonight - eventually led him to provide some last minute, but apparently invaluable assistance to Taft’s 1908 campaign.

But more on that another time. Now it’s off to bed for the Pyles, where they can digest the above-mentioned items - as well as their Smithfield Ham Glace (Hot) with Madeira sauce and spinach, their Peaches Melba and their Blue Point Oysters - and brace themselves for breakfast with Theodore Roosevelt.

“He lay awhile conscious of great comfort”

It’s a beautiful day, so here’s a beautiful Howard Pyle painting of a beautiful day. The reproduction is dodgy and the original painting is missing, so who knows what the colors really are, but they’re still effective and the composition is unusual and interesting.

Pyle painted “He lay awhile conscious of great comfort" for Justus Miles Forman’s “The Island of Enchantment” in the October 1905 issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine. It later appeared in the book of the same title. So far, I’ve found no record of it being exhibited; maybe Pyle sold it soon after it was published.

It’s always useful to compare Pyle’s results with the text, so here is Foreman’s description of the scene:

That his eyes opened upon blue sky instead of upon painted or carved ceiling roused in him no astonishment. In service against the Turks and against the Genoese he had often slept in the open, waking when the morning light became strong enough to force its way through his eyelids. He lay awhile, conscious of great comfort and bodily well-being, coming slowly and lazily into full possession of his faculties. The air was fresh and warm, with a scent of thyme in it, and from somewhere in the near distance sea-birds mewed plaintively, after their kind. He dropped his eyes from the pale-blue sky and saw that though he lay upon turf - a hill it would seem, or the crest of a cliff - there was a stretch of tranquil sea before him, a narrow stretch, and beyond this a mountain range looming sheer and barren from the water's edge.

The sun must be rising behind it, he said to himself, for the tips of the serrated peaks glowed golden, momentarily brighter, so that it hurt his eyes to watch them. He wondered what mountains these could be, and then, all in a flash, it came upon him where he was - that this was Arbe, and that ridge the Velebic mountains of the main-land....

The woman who had saved his life half knelt, half sat behind him, and upon her knees his head had lain. At this moment she was leaning back a little, with her head and shoulders against a small tree which stood there, and her eyes were closed as if she were asleep.

“Come, come, your Future Majesty! Cheer up!”

Another long-lost Howard Pyle painting is about to go on the block at Scottsdale Art Auction on March 31, 2012. It’s Lot 322.

“Come, come, your Future Majesty! Cheer up!” illustrated “Eden-Gates” by Justus Miles Forman in Harper’s Monthly Magazine for March 1905. And then it went missing - until now. As far as I know, Pyle never exhibited this 24 x 16" oil on canvas. It’s a nicely painted piece: I particularly appreciate his handling of the tapestry (and wonder if he based it on something in particular) and the carpet - not to mention the paneling, the carved chair, and even the table’s claw-foot that peeks out from under the drooping table cloth. All so loosely painted, but dead on.

The monk (Brother Aurelius), by the way, bears an uncanny resemblance to Pyle’s student Harvey Dunn. This might be coincidental, however, since Dunn only arrived in Wilmington the previous fall - though he is known to have posed for Pyle not long after joining the school. For comparison, here’s Dunn as a much older man via Picture It: Observations, Inspiration and Lessons about Illustration Art.

Yes, Mr. Pyle, but...

“After all, it is the result of my words that will tell, and not the words themselves. If I may help and inspire young artists with an exalted idea of their mission, and if an improvement of their work is the result, then I shall have served my mission, and it will not matter in the least whether my words are recorded or not recorded.”

Howard Pyle to Marie-Marguerite Frechette, February 2, 1905.

“Some Took His Time”

“Some took his time” by Howard Pyle is an illustration for “How the Old Horse Won the Bet” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which formed part of The One Hoss Shay With its Companion Poems, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. in 1905.

For this project, the publisher supplied Pyle with proofs - printed on Bristol board - of the illustrations he had made for the 1891 edition of the book, which Pyle then “colorized” with watercolors.

Imagination vs. Imitation

Howard Pyle’s “We started to run back to the raft for our lives” from “Sindbad on Burrator” by A. T. Quiller Couch in Scribner's Magazine for August 1902. See the original oil at the Delaware Art Museum.

“...I think you may easily see that in the making of a successful picture, the artist must compose and arrange his figures and effects altogether from his imagination, and that there is very little opportunity in the making of such a picture for him to copy exactly the position of a model placed before him in the lights and shadows which the studios afford. Nor is it likely that he can find any background to copy accurately and exactly into such an imaginative picture.

“For example: suppose an artist were called upon to paint a picture of a man running away from his enemies along the shores of a sea; with a gray sky overhead, and a strong wind blowing over the landscape. You see, he could not pose a model in the required position, for not only could no model hold such a position as that of a man running, with a center of gravity projected far beyond the point of impact; but even if the model were suspended in the air in such a position, yet he would not convey the idea of running. Apart from this it would be very difficult to find exactly the seascape to fit the picture, and exactly the landscape. For all this, the man must draw, not upon the facts of nature, but upon his imagination.

“If I have expressed myself at all clearly, you will see that what a man needs to paint an imaginative picture of such a sort, is not the power of imitation, but the knowledge to draw a figure from imagination.…”

Howard Pyle to William Merchant Richardson French (Director of the Art Institute of Chicago), June 22, 1905

Twelfth Night, 1906

In 1904 Howard Pyle was elected a non-resident member of New York City’s prestigious Century Association - his name having been proposed by publisher J. Henry Harper and seconded by painter John White Alexander. Late the following year, Pyle was asked to design the invitation and program for the club’s traditional Twelfth Night celebration, to be held on January 6, 1906.

Either out of his own enthusiasm, or a desire to impress his fellow members, Pyle turned what should have been a quick and casual job into something much more ambitious. “I am afraid you are taking the Twelfth Night drawing too seriously,” warned his friend Frank Millet, who was coordinating the project (and who later went down with the Titanic):

The committee is very anxious to have something to send out with the notices which must be issued soon and they do not expect an elaborate work nor would they desire to give you much trouble about it.... Dr Curtis apparently dreams of something which in a few lines of the pencil will illustrate fully his description of the revels at Eagle-roost. But you can see from the old programs I sent you that elaboration is not necessary.

Millet wrote that on November 19, 1905, but I gather it was too late for Pyle to rein himself in. The invitation (which was also issued in grey-blue wrappers) and the program were printed under his supervision by John M. Rogers on Orange Street (“opposite the Old Malt House,” reads the colophon) in Wilmington, Delaware. Rogers had, among other things, printed Pyle’s Catalogue of Drawings Illustrating the Life of Gen. Washington and of Colonial Life, The Ghost of Captain Brand, and The Divinity of Labor - all in 1897 - and The Constitution and By-Laws of the Howard Pyle School of Art in 1903.

In addition to the drawings, Pyle did all the lettering seen here, except for the verse stanzas in “Centuria’s Call” and the portion of the paragraph beneath “The Programme of the Festival”: these were set in Fifteenth Century (later known as Caslon Antique), which Pyle began to use almost as soon as it was issued by the type foundry of Barnhart Brothers & Spindler.

And yet, for all his work, Pyle may not even have attended the Twelfth Night festivities: instead, he may have gone to the Franklin Inn Club’s dinner - for which he had also decorated the program cover - held the same evening in Philadelphia.

(By the way, Dr. Edward Curtis (1838-1912), whom Millet mentioned above, co-performed the autopsy on the body of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.)

“The best engraver in the world is Mr. French”

The Yale Club bookplate by Howard Pyle, 1905 (engraved by Edwin Davis French)

“I have long admired your very admirable work, and have lost no opportunity of speaking of it to my friends, I am glad that my small efforts in that direction have brought about such results as the Bibliophile bookmark [sic], and the book-plate of the Yale Club.”

So said Howard Pyle in a letter to Edwin Davis French, written on December 11, 1905. Pyle had just completed a bookplate design for Edith Kermit Roosevelt - Teddy’s wife - and was hoping to get French to engrave it. He had said in a letter to her, “I think the best engraver in the world is Mr French. If he cuts this for you you will have a treasure that will always be a joy to you, for his work is as good as it is possible to be.” French, however, was unavailable for a few months, so Pyle got Sidney L. Smith to do the work instead.

I confess I don’t know what Pyle meant by “the Bibliophile bookmark.” Pyle’s drawings and paintings for the Bibliophile Society were photo-engraved, or etched by W. H. W. Bicknell. French did, however, engrave Pyle’s second bookplate for The Players Club in 1894.

The Players Club bookplate by Howard Pyle, 1894 (engraved by Edwin Davis French)


I think this is Pyle’s least successful bookplate design. I blame him for an awkward conception more than French for faulty engraving, although French seems to have blamed himself for its defects. It was, I understand, only his second such commission and Pyle’s “exquisitely delicate wash-drawing” - as French called it - “at the time seemed to me (and indeed I fear it proved to be) quite too formidable an undertaking for a plate-engraver of my limited experience.”

Perhaps the original art will turn up one of these days and we’ll be able to judge for ourselves.

The Pyle-Parrish Connection

Did Maxfield Parrish actually study with Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in the winter of 1894-95? The topic has been debated over the years and James Gurney presents some evidence sort of against the notion, via Frank Schoonover. But Schoonover, who entered Pyle’s class at Drexel in Fall 1896, is not always a reliable witness. So, here is some opposing evidence from the horses’ mouths, as it were...

The Delaware Historical Society owns a draft of a letter Pyle wrote in December 1905, while negotiating with S. S. McClure about taking over the art editorship of McClure’s Magazine (as well as a larger scheme that never took off). In it, Pyle states:

It so happens that for years I have been teaching my pupils that that which really counts in the work of a true artist is not so much the ability to draw well and to paint well as it is to say something from the heart concerning Nature and humanity and in saying that thing so strongly that it shall make a vital appeal to other men and women, even if they do not know much about the technical excellencies of art.

The result of this plan of education has been that my pupils have been almost unusually successful in their work. For I have been able to train such artists as Mr Parrish, Miss Green, Miss Smith, Miss Oakley, Mr Aylward, Mr Schoonover, Mr Wyeth, Mr Arthurs, Mr Oakley, etc etc. so that their work has made a distinct impression upon the world of American Art - at least of American Magazine Art.

So much for Pyle’s point of view. But Parrish, too, touched on the subject three different times in letters (now at the Delaware Art Museum) to Richard Wayne Lykes, author of the invaluable thesis, “Howard Pyle, Teacher of Illustration”:

I was in his class at the Drexel Institute for only a winter and did not have the chance to know him as well as members of his class which was formed afterwards.... It was not so much the actual things he taught us as contact with his personality that really counted. Somehow after a talk with him you felt inspired to go out and do great things, and wondered afterwards by what magic he did it... [March 28, 1945]

You see, I knew him impersonally for one winter in a rather large class, whereas those thirty members of his class at Chadds Ford had a chance during the five summers to get thoroughly acquainted with him.... I really could not say just what part of my training could be attributed to H.P. Inspiration perhaps more than anything... [April 9, 1945]

I wish I could tell you more of my association with H.P. - anecdotes and the like, I saw far less of him than the other students, and hardly had a chance to get acquainted. I’ve an idea I dropped out of that first class at the Drexel Institute before the end, no doubt to work on soap advertisements and worse, dreadful stuff, but wasn’t I glad to get them! I had one grand day with him when he invited me down to Wilmington, and we drove around the countryside. He was living then in the fine old house of Ambassador Byard (?) [sic: Bayard] After that I never saw him again. [January 15, 1948]

Incidentally, Pyle moved out of the Bayard house, “Delamore,” in (I think) April 1896, so the visit occurred sometime in 1895 or ’96. Parrish also noted in a January 10, 1951, letter to Thornton Oakley: “Yes, I was in Howard Pyle’s class at Drexel for a while.”

So there you go.

And it’s interesting to point out that - I’m pretty sure - Parrish and Pyle’s wife, Anne Poole Pyle, were blood relatives: first cousins twice removed, to be exact: Anne’s grandparents, William Poole and Sarah Sharples, were Parrish’s great-great grandparents.

The American Art News on Howard Pyle, March 25, 1905

"Mr. Howard Pyle, as he said in his lecture at the Art [Students'] League on [March 18th], regards the making of compositions of extreme importance in an art student's training. This is the principal feature in the work of his class at Wilmington. He considers the main-spring of a composition to be 'mental projection,' or the power to so project one's mind into the picture as to actually live it. This power is contributed to by the multiplied experience of mature years, and by reading. 'No one,' Mr. Pyle says, 'requires as broad knowledge and wide reading as the pictorial artist of to-day.' He teaches the necessity of elimination - that is, after a composition is once created the eliminations are more important than the additions; also, to truly use black and white one must have color in mind. Mr. Pyle was especially interested in the compositions of Hugo Ballin and Remington Schuyler; their work he considers to be of great promise."

The American Art News, March 25, 1905

The Suicide, 1905

I remember when I first saw this picture: I was about 14, in the basement of the Argosy Bookstore in Manhattan, desperately leafing through bound volumes of Harper’s Monthly Magazine in search of Pyles - and this one stopped me dead in my tracks. That gleaming sliver cutting through the curtains! It still makes me squint. And contrast that intense glow with the grayish pallor of the dead man’s flesh - the same tone as his shirt and the curiously placed globe lampshade. The butler's expression may be too exaggerated, but still this is one of Pyle’s most ingenious works in color.

“The Crown-Prince Karl, dead by his own hand” illustrated “Carlotta” by Justus Miles Forman in Harper’s Monthly for May 1905. Subsequently, Pyle exhibited the painting with the title “The Suicide,” but the subject was apparently off-putting to buyers and it remained unsold at the time of his death. The Delaware Art Museum now owns the original.

Howard Pyle in Green Bay, Wisconsin

In tweaking my last post (which I reserve the right to do, now and then), I found that the Green Bay and De Pere Antiquarian Society had posted photos of the Pyle paintings it recently acquired from the Brown County Library. The photos aren’t the best quality, but it’s good to see them nevertheless. Bear in mind that the photos were taken with black and white film and, although painted in black and white oil, the originals are much warmer and more “colorful” than they appear here.

And - just so folks won’t feel misled by the title of this post - Howard Pyle did, in fact, visit Green Bay: he arrived there at noon on Saturday, November 4, 1905, and spoke at the Elks Club that evening (it was supposed to be a slide lecture, but there were last minute technical problems, so he was forced to speak without backup). He spent the night with Mr. and Mrs. George Ellis at their home at 905 South Monroe Avenue (pictured below) and left town on Sunday.