A Cover Design for the New Year

Howard Pyle’s cover design for the January 1900 issue of McClure’s Magazine is not necessarily his best work, nor is it very well known: it was used only once and the original art is missing.

Pyle had promised to do the job early in 1899, but, busy as ever, he only got around to submitting sketches in July, while working and teaching at Chadd’s Ford. After a couple of false starts, he finally hit on something acceptable to the publisher in mid-August. In a letter accompanying his ultimately approved sketch, he explained, “My idea is to depict somewhat the feeling of the Angel of Futurity bearing in one hand the wassail bowl and in the other the scythe of Fate, the crescent moon typifying a new era and the dead branches that of the past.”

It looks like Pyle replaced the bowl with a chalice, for some reason. And it’s not clear how he executed the final picture: was it - like many of the illustrations made by his female students - in charcoal tinted with watercolor? Or was it in oil?

Howard Pyle Meets With John Sloan, May 1, 1906

According to his diary, John Sloan met Howard Pyle on this day in 1906. Sloan, then, was making his living as an illustrator, but also painting and etching like mad on the side. Howard Pyle, meanwhile, was enduring an odd stint in his life as the Art Editor of McClure’s Magazine, located at 44 East 23rd Street in New York City. (Incidentally, another probable occupant of the offices that same day was Willa Cather, who had recently joined the magazine’s staff and who had also recently presented Pyle with a copy of her book The Troll Garden.) After meeting with Pyle, Sloan wrote:

Made my first call on Howard Pyle, who is now Art Editor of McClure’s Magazine. Showed him my proofs, illustrations, etc. He treated me with courtesy. Said my work was good in “character” but just at present, you know - everything - not giving out much work - supplied ahead, etc., etc. Call again.

The two men may have met before, perhaps during one art function or another in Philadelphia in the 1890s, though this is the only documented encounter I’ve been able to locate. And Sloan’s sister Marianna is rumored to have been one of Pyle’s students (at least according to the Syracuse Post-Standard of February 14, 1904). Even so, Sloan didn’t sound very encouraged. Two weeks after that meeting - and in the wake of a crisis at the McClure offices - Sloan noted that, despite the exodus of a large chunk of the staff, including muckraking superstars Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell: “H. Pyle remains, I fear. Little chance for my work under the ‘boilermaker.’”

Ouch. Was Sloan reflecting on the steady stream of illustrators from Pyle’s “big art manufactory [sic]” (as Pyle student George Harding referred to it), who virtually flooded the market with what some artists no doubt deemed a clichéd way of making pictures? Maybe so.

The magazine did, however, publish a story, “The Debts of Antoine” by W. B. MacHarg, with Sloan’s pictures - dated ’06 - in the December 1906 issue. Whether Pyle commissioned these or not, I don’t yet know, but Sloan considered it “joyful news” when Pyle resigned from McClure’s that August.

N. C. Wyeth’s “Big” Cover Design

On a Friday night 107 years ago this month, N. C. Wyeth wrote to his “Mama” back in Hingham, Massachusetts:

This week has gone past like lightning. - Really, I never experienced such a “fast” week in my life. I've bent every effort, poured every bit of my inner self into my work this week, endeavoring to reach a much higher plane in my work, and secondly to satisfy Mr. Pyle in his wish for a “big” cover design. I have, I am positive, reached a higher plane, according to those opinions about me, including Mr. Pyle’s. I would like so much to have you see the picture. It’s one of an Indian chief with his right hand up, palm forward showing friendship. He is on his mustang with his feathered lance across his saddle.

The week has been very individual. I know I shall always remember it because it has been one of intense seriousness of purpose and more or less of a victory for me.

I should note that in the invaluable book, The Wyeths: The Intimate Correspondence of N. C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, this letter is dated July 2, 1906 - which was a Monday, not a Friday, as Wyeth states outright and implies twice, so its more probable date is July 6, 1906 (though I suppose there’s also a chance it could be June 29, 1906).

At any rate, Wyeth was writing in the midst of turmoil both personal and professional: he was a new husband, had a new house, had his first child on the way, and his work was in dizzying demand. He also had a very demanding teacher: “Mr. Pyle expects so much of me,” Wyeth had written a few weeks earlier. For better or worse - probably worse - Howard Pyle had taken charge of the art department of McClure’s Magazine that February and ever since had been pressuring his prize pupil to illustrate more and more for it.

But Wyeth was remarkably resilient, full of energy and ideas, and the pressure resulted in the creation of some of his strongest pictures, at least in these pre-Scribner’s Illustrated Classics days. And he was only 23-years-old!

The Good, Aged Doctor

“The Good, Aged Doctor” by Howard Pyle (1899)

“The Good, Aged Doctor” - or, more precisely, “The good, aged Doctor, the appearance of whose rotund figure on the streets was the signal for the Parisians to doff their hats” - was one of four illustrations Howard Pyle made for James Barnes’s “The Man for the Hour” in McClure’s Magazine for December 1899.

Benjamin Franklin is, of course, “the good, aged doctor”; the street in Paris is most likely a particular one, but I haven’t yet figured out which.

Pyle probably painted this (and its three companions) in mid-1899, while conducting the Drexel Institute’s second Summer School of Illustration at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. I assume this only because his student and future sister-in-law, Ellen Bernard Thompson, made two pictures for this same article at that time. Pyle also probably showed his and Thompson’s pictures at an exhibition of work made by Pyle and by his class for various Christmas 1899 periodicals at the Drexel Institute January 15-26, 1900, and subsequently at Earle’s Galleries in Philadelphia.

I never really thought much of this image, perhaps because the black and white magazine reproduction (see below) flattens and sucks much of the life out of the complex composition. But the original 18.25 x 12.5" oil on board - which is primarily in black, white, and red (and maybe yellow, unless that’s old varnish), yet seems almost full-color - is quite lovely. It’s also for sale: after over a century in the hands of one family - which obtained it from Pyle himself, apparently - it’s going on the block Wednesday, December 12, 2012, at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago. That’s tomorrow!

P.S. The painting sold for $29,375.00 (including buyer’s premium).

“The Good, Aged Doctor” in McClure’s Magazine for December 1899

November 3, 1906

On November 3, 1906, Basil King, author of “The Hanging of Mary Dyer,” wrote to Howard Pyle:

Permit me to thank you for the beautiful illustrations with which you have ennobled - the word is just - my little story of Mary Dyer, in the November issue of McClure’s. I cannot but feel that if I had only seen the illustrations first, I should have written a better tale. I have to thank you, too, and most sincerely, for the kind suggestions with regard to one or two details in the story, that were incorrect. It was the more important that Mary Dyer should come out of the prison with her hands unbound - as you represented her - from the fact that in the scene on the scaffold, which is absolutely historical, she is spoken of as though, at first, her hands were free. Until you pointed it out, I had not noticed the inconsistency in my own narrative. Again let me offer you my most genuine thanks.

The painting King refers to, "At her appearing the multitude was hushed, awed by that air she wore" (5 x 7.4" in the magazine, 21.5 x 30.5" in the flesh), has also gone by the more prosaic “Mary Dyer Being Led to The Scaffold.” According to my notes, George L. Dyer purchased it and its two companion paintings (both about 16 x 24") directly from Pyle. On October 31, 1921, the two companion paintings were stolen from a private residence in East Orange, New Jersey, and never recovered. This one, though, now belongs to the Newport Historical Society in Rhode Island.

The Chase of the Tide, 1901

When it comes to pictures, I am particularly fond of oblong compositions - especially oblong horizontal compositions. Is it from watching so many widescreen films? Is it something I’m genetically predisposed to, something I inherited from my father? It doesn’t matter. But here is an oblong Howard Pyle that has undeservedly slipped through the cracks - that is, unless you have the August 1901 issue of McClure’s Magazine handy. It’s an untitled illustration for “The Chase of the Tide” by Norman Duncan, and weighs in at a mere 5 x 1.7 inches. The printing isn’t great and the halftone (which shows the hand of an actual, human engraver, who has retouched the sky and bits of the boat) is murky, but the abstract wonderfulness of the picture shines through. As you see, words fail me.