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.”

Howard Pyle’s Titanic Connections

Headpiece for “McAndrew’s Hymn” by Howard Pyle (1894)

Howard Pyle’s connections to the Titanic disaster are tenuous at best, seeing that he had been dead five months when the ship went down. Legend has it, however, that his son Wilfrid, aged 14 - and perhaps also his other son Godfrey, 16 - who had stayed on in Europe to attend school in Switzerland, had tickets for the Titanic’s maiden voyage, but didn’t use them. At least one ticket is believed to have survived, but it’s gone missing. The question is, though, why would the boys leave school in April instead of filling out the school year? Grief? Homesickness? Spring break? At any rate, they wound up sailing safe and sound on the Kaiser Wilhelm II from Cherbourg in July 1912.

But Pyle was indeed connected to at least two bona fide Titanic passengers. One was Major Archibald Butt, who had served as an aide to both Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and who had grown so distressed over the 1912 presidential race that he needed a recuperative trip to Europe. Teddy’s daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth (whose conversations generated one of my favorite books, Mrs. L) recalled him fondly:

Archie Butt was another good friend. Archibald Willingham Andrew Brackenbreed...Butt, we used to chant, teasing him about his name, which we said sounded like a load of coal falling downstairs. He had a very good sense of humor.

It so happens that Butt mentioned both Alice and Pyle in a letter to his sister, written November 12, 1908, the day after a celebratory White House luncheon attended by key players in Taft’s recent campaign victory over William Jennings Bryan:

A Mr. Pyle, a distinguished illustrator, and his wife were guests also. The former spent most of his time making sketches of those at the table and presenting them to Mrs. Longworth.

(Oh, what I’d give for those sketches! I’ve looked for them, in vain. But, anyway...) It sounds like Butt barely knew Pyle. Actually, unless he was just over-explaining for his sister’s benefit, it sounds like he may not even have known of Pyle. This seems odd, though, considering Pyle’s stature at the time, not to mention his friendship with people Butt knew very well. Like Francis Davis Millet, who apparently shared a house with Butt in Washington, D. C. (and whose relationship with Butt has been the source of some speculation).

Artist-author Frank Millet had known Pyle for over 30 years and was an unabashed enthusiast of Pyle’s work. In fact, Millet had been instrumental in getting Pyle his last mural commission for the Hudson County Court House in Jersey City, New Jersey. On November 14, 1911, Millet, then in Rome, had written to Anne Poole Pyle:

Having been out of touch for some time with newspapers, I came across by accident yesterday the shocking news of your husband’s death. I had planned to come to Florence within a few days to see you all quite unsuspicious that anything was the matter with him.

I write now to offer you my heartfelt sympathies in your great affliction and irreparable loss, this to you and to the children. I shall always cherish as one of my most pleasant memories the visit I made to Wilmington.

He has built a great monument for himself and his family in the art he has produced and has had no rival....

Five months later, Millet joined Archie Butt on the Titanic for the voyage back to America. Both went down with the ship.

Tailpiece for “McAndrew’s Hymn” by Howard Pyle (1894)

[Please note that the images shown here have nothing to do with the Titanic per se, but they’re the best I could do. Pyle made them to illustrate Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “McAndrew’s Hymn” for the December 1894 issue of Scribner’s Magazine.]

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.)