In 1911, however, Scott Quintin (1884-1963) was an architect and from about 1907 on Howard Pyle grew more and more anxious to obtain mural commissions from architects. So did Pyle send it to the exhibition (via Quintin) as a way to drum up interest in his work? Or did he give it or sell it to Quintin, who exhibited it without Pyle's knowledge?
On the other hand, according to Who’s Who in the Pacific Southwest (Los Angeles: Times-Mirror Printing & Binding House, 1913), Scott Quintin studied free-hand and architectural drawing at the Drexel Institute between 1897 and 1904. So was “A Study” something a teenaged Quintin acquired during his Drexel days? Was it something Pyle drew in front of his class as part of a demonstration and then, say, left behind, only to be secreted home by Quintin (who, as far as I know, was not a Pyle student)? Or did Pyle simply give it to Quintin sometime between 1897 and 1900?
Well, at least we do know that the cavalier in “A Study” is wearing the same boots which turn up in dozens of Pyle’s pictures - the same boots which were “inherited” by his student Stanley Arthurs, then purchased by Betsy James Wyeth, then presented to her husband at Christmas 1950, then worn by Andrew Wyeth as he took recuperative rambles over the fields around Chadds Ford, and then featured by him (sans buckles) in his 1951 “self-portrait” called “Trodden Weed.”
I want those boots!
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