More on John Henderson Betts

Last year I posted something about John Henderson Betts, who studied with Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute and at Chadd’s Ford, but who met an untimely and gruesome end shortly before his 25th birthday. Since then, a few of his paintings have come to light...

Betts conveniently dated this one November 9 (or 4), 1897, and he most likely made it in Pyle’s Life Class Studying from the Draped and Costumed Model (a.k.a. “Draped Model Class” or “Class in Draped Model” and so on) since it contains no “setting” per se. As Pyle said in the Drexel course catalogue:

In this class, departing essentially from the ordinary work of academic schools in studying from the living figure, the model is costumed and posed in some suggestive action, and the student is instructed to draw the figure that it may be introduced into a picture.

Or, as he put it another (yet, perhaps still convoluted) way:

The purpose here is to instruct the student in the necessary technical methods to be used in representing the draped human figure. The processes required to properly draw the draped figure are so different from those demanded in the rendition of other kinds of academic work that it has been found necessary to require proficiency in this before advancing the student to the final branch of instruction.

Although Pyle did not pick Betts’ study for the second annual School of Illustration show in the spring of 1898, another student, Cornelia Greenough, exhibited “The Cavalier, 1650,” which may have come from the same pose. (Betts' “Colonial Figure, 1740” was shown, however, as well as his “Peace and War,” “Study of a Head - Emperor,” and “The Highwayman.”)

And now here’s something representative of “the final branch of instruction” - i.e. the Illustration Class:

 

Although this one is not titled, I would call it “The Priest and the Piper.” Why? Because two other Pyle students, Sarah S. Stilwell and Bertha Corson Day, exhibited pictures of that name in the May 1899 student show at Drexel and Pyle (who I’m sure wrote the text of the catalogue) said:

The subject was painted as class work with the purpose of having one of the pictures used in Harper’s Weekly [sic] Hallowe’-en number. Of all the class work, the best two examples were chosen. The above two were submitted to Harper’s Weekly, and the drawing by Miss Stilwell was selected as being the most available for publication.

Now, compare Betts’ with Stilwell’s picture, which was published in Harper's Bazar (not Harper's Weekly) for November 5, 1898. There it’s called “A Vision on All-Hallows Eve” and it illustrates a playlet by Pyle himself, titled “The Priest and the Piper: A Halloween Fantasy”...

“A Vision on All-Hallows Eve” by Sarah S. Stilwell (1898)

And while we’re on the topic, the Brandywine River Museum has a painting by Caroline Louise Gussmann, which may have been born out of the same knock-kneed piper pose. (In fact, there may well be a score of similar images out there - and the same goes for Betts’ cavalier picture.)

“Tipsy Piper” by Caroline Louise Gussmann

This next and last one is dated November 1898, which may have been after Betts left Drexel. But the Pyle influence is still very much in evidence - and since one of Betts’ compositions was exhibited in the May 1899 show, perhaps he studied with Pyle for a while after the summer session of 1898. This looks less like a class piece than a bona fide illustration, though I have yet to identify if, when, or where it was published.

And in case you’re inclined to learn more about these or see several other works by Betts, please look here.

Would that I could snag them myself!

The Death of a Pyle Student, March 3, 1902

"They're After Us, John!" by John Henderson Betts (1898)

John Henderson Betts (born April 6, 1877) was one of Howard Pyle's more promising pupils at the Drexel Institute. His work was shown in the first exhibition of work done in the School of Illustration (1897) and Pyle featured one of his pictures in his article, "A Small School of Art" (Harper’s Weekly, July 17, 1897). Betts was also one of the ten students awarded scholarships to the first Summer School of Illustration at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania, in 1898. While there he made six illustrations for The Boys of Old Monmouth by Everett T. Tomlinson (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1898), including "They're After Us, John!" He appears in these two snapshots taken that summer, on the porch of Washington's Headquarters, where the male students boarded:

Front row: William F. Weed, Clyde DeLand, Frank Schoonover. Back row: Stanley Arthurs, Winfield S. Lukens, John H. Betts (in shirt sleeves), Robert L. Mason

Top to bottom: Robert L. Mason, Stanley Arthurs, William Francis Weed, James Wood (an instructor in Drexel's Antique Class, who backed up Pyle that summer), John H. Betts, Clyde O. DeLand, Winfield S. Lukens

Coincidentally - and if my genealogical calculations are correct - John Henderson Betts was also the third cousin of his classmate Anna Whelan Betts (1873-1959) and her sister Ethel Franklin Betts (born 1878), both Pyle students. He married Mary Furman Smith on November 1, 1900.

Despite his promise, Betts is little remembered today, for on March 3, 1902, he came to a terrible end. The Germantown Guide for March 15, 1902, described what happened:

Germantown Artist's Awful Death


John Henderson Betts met a shocking death on Monday by falling down the elevator shaft from the eleventh floor of the Real Estate Trust Building, southeast corner of Broad and Chestnut streets. Mr. Betts was hurrying to keep an appointment with his father, Colonel Charles M. Betts, a wholesale lumber dealer, whose office is on the twelfth floor of the building. The only other passenger in the car was Mr. William A. Messinger, of Clayton, Pa., who alighted at the eleventh floor. He says he heard the doors of the elevator shaft behind him. Almost immediately after that he heard a noise as if the doors had been reopened, and a scream which caused him to look around in time to see Mr. Betts go headlong over the edge of the platform through the doorway and into the shaft. Albert F. Gault, the boy in charge of the elevator, said that just as he started the car Mr. Betts said something to the effect that he had passed his floor, and clutched at the doors. The lever was at once reversed and the next thing Gault knew his passenger had disappeared. The body was taken to the Morgue, where it was identified soon after, when it was removed to 2034 Spring Garden Street, the residence of the deceased's father, where the funeral services were held on Thursday morning. Mr. Betts resided with his wife, to whom he was married in 1900, on Pomona Terrace, and was in his twenty-fifth year. He was a graduate of the Friends' Central School, and four years ago finished a course under Howard Pyle, the celebrated illustrator, at the Drexel Institute. He at once established himself as an illustrator became very successful, having his studio at 430 Walnut street. Among the most conspicuous books he has illustrated are Edward Robins' "Washington and Braddock's Campaign" and "An Iron Horse Chase; or, a Boy's Adventures in the Civil War." Mr. Betts also illustrated John Habberton's "Some Boy's Doings," and had only recently completed four illustrations in color for Mr. Robin's "A Boy in Early Virginia." He also illustrated Charles Heber Clarke's "Captain Bluitt," and was engaged at the time of his death in the illustration of a magazine story by Julien Gordon (Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger). He had also contributed illustrations to the Century, Scribner's and other magazines.