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.]

Slideshow at the Drexel Institute, January 9, 1906

At 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 9, 1906, Howard Pyle delivered a lecture illustrated with steriopticon slides titled “The True Spirit of Art” at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. The next day, the Philadelphia Inquirer noted:

HOWARD PYLE GIVES LECTURE

That the true spirit of art is the work of the imagination and soul of the artist, which expresses his inner thought clearly and forcefully, even though the work may not be technically correct, was the theory advanced yesterday afternoon by Howard Pyle, the well-known artist, in the Drexel Institute.

And an as yet unidentified newspaper gave a much more detailed report, also on January 10, 1906, which I’ve transcribed in full, below. Although the article names a number of the pictures Pyle featured in his slideshow, I’m having difficulty identifying all of them, so if anyone can present some more viable candidates, please let me know.

HOWARD PYLE TELLS OF THE TRUE IN ART
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HOW A PAINTER MAY REALLY ATTAIN HIS IDEAL
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Work of Famous Men Portrayed in a Lecture Delivered at the Drexel Institute
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Howard Pyle lectured at the Drexel Institute yesterday on “The True in Art.” His chief aim was to show that the ambition of a great artist should be to portray his ideal in as vividly life-like a manner as the barriers to all artistic expression will permit. He cannot express passage of time or increase of age, the speaker said, but he can express emotion.

To illustrate the difference between the art of the past and that of the present, as regards the truest understanding of a picture, was another of Mr. Pyle’s objects. The main difference, he said, lies in the difference of man’s mind, which in the Middle Ages was not creative. To illustrate the speaker’s points stereopticon views were given. Four pictures representative of the art of the past, which were shown, pointed out that in the picture of the Madonna by Botticelli the Virgin is not portrayed as a Jewish maiden, but as an Italian symbolic of the perfection of womanhood. The same is true of Raphael’s Madonna, which portrays the highest form of maternal love, but only as the artist saw it among Italian women.

Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” is not necessarily THE Madonna Pyle discussed, but she’ll have to do for now.

As with the Raphael, Pyle may have discussed another Madonna than the “Madonna del Magnificat” by Sandro Botticelli.


Mr. Pyle next had thrown on the screen a picture by Chavannes, “The Heavenly Vision,” in which the perspective was very faulty, not because the artist could not draw properly, but because his whole aim and thought had been centered on his dreamlike reflection of the heavenly vision. [I assume this refers to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’ “Vision Antique” - though I suppose it could be “L’Inspiration Chrétienne”]

A similar idea was shown in the pictures by Millet - “Procession of Joseph,” the “Ploughmen” and an effective and wonderful work entitled “Leaving England,” [sic - “The Last of England” by Ford Madox Brown ] on which the artist labored years to bring an acute sense of tragedy to the face.

I assume “The Procession of Joseph” is really “The Flight into Egypt” by Jean François Millet. It represents Joseph carrying the Christ child - with halo aglow - followed by Mary. There is a similar version, where Mary is carrying the baby and is sitting on a donkey led by Joseph, but I believe Pyle would have been more familiar with the version show here.

“The Last of England” by Ford Madox Brown


Millais’s “Ophelia” was another illustration used to show the extent to which the artist went to get just the right touch of a woman floating in the water.

“Ophelia” by John Everett Millais


Then Mr. Pyle spoke of the American school of artists of today. Placing Augustus St. Gaudens at the head of the list, he presented a picture of the head of “Victory” used on the Sherman statue to show that this was St. Gaudens’s conception of glorified American womanhood.

“Head of Victory” by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Pyle had a slide made from a plaster study which the sculptor had given him in 1902. Shown here is a replica of the bronze version.


George De Forest Brush’s power of accepting and digesting a side of American life was shown in a powerful picture of primitive life - “Indians Spearing a Deer.”

“Indians Spearing a Deer” is more likely “The Moose Chase” by George De Forest Brush


The position of Winslow Homer in the artistic world, Mr. Pyle said, was not fully settled, “but that he ranks among the greatest artists today cannot be disputed. His ‘Maine Coast’ is considered one of the finest sea scenes ever painted.”

“Maine Coast” by Winslow Homer

In this way Mr. Pyle tried to illustrate his theme, that to be a great artist the aspirant must not think solely of painting and drawing well - for then he will in time make a beautiful picture, but never a great one. To paint a great picture he must have a huge ideal which he is always trying to express in its most complete form as he sees it in his dreams.

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.)

Howard Pyle 100 Years Ago

What was Howard Pyle doing exactly 100 years ago?

Why, painting like mad on "Peter Stuyvesant and the English Fleet" (also known as "Coming of the English"). Seven feet high and almost twenty-five feet long, it was his largest picture to date.

The commission, arranged by his friend Frank Millet, had come in the winter of 1910: Pyle was to produce this and two other, even larger murals, plus two smaller pictures for the Hudson County Court House in Jersey City, New Jersey, before it opened in late summer.

It was an awfully tight schedule, but Pyle had been desperate to get just this kind of work, so it was worth the struggle. Adding to the burden, however, was a looming deadline with Charles Scribner's Sons to deliver the fourth and final volume of his Arthuriad, The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur, set to be published that fall.

But Pyle was able to keep the book more or less on track and do his research and make careful, detailed preparatory studies for the murals. As the enormous canvases wouldn't fit in his own studio, he took over one of the three students' studios next door. He also hired his trusted disciples, Stanley Arthurs and Frank Schoonover, to help him.

By June 1, 1910, the trio had begun working on "Stuyvesant" at a feverish pace. Near month's end, Schoonover took the two photographs of Pyle shown here.

"What a pity to throw away such an opportunity," wrote N. C. Wyeth on July 4, soon after seeing Pyle and the Stuyvesant mural "which was completed, COMPLETED, I say, in one month and a day - and he brags about it!" Wyeth complained that "the picture is no decoration - not even a good illustration, that it is terribly unfinished and ill-considered from an artistic standpoint. No thought, of the higher quality, was attempted on the canvas. A shell of delineation, absolutely nothing else. Not even good drawing!" He also denounced the involvement of Arthurs and Schoonover, who he believed had done a little too much of the heavy lifting.

Notwithstanding, Pyle and the "Boys" (as he called them) attacked the second mural, "Hendryk Hudson and the Half-Moon," at the same breakneck speed. By mid-August Pyle had shipped it and "Stuyvesant" to Jersey City for installation and retouching. The Jersey Journal for December 8, 1977, describes what happened next:

He sent them on ahead, arriving several days after the murals.

Pyle found that the murals had already been placed on the wall and that two holes had been cut in each to accommodate ventilators. On top of that a four-inch strip of moulding had been placed around the Stuyvesant mural instead of a two inch strip. The four-inch strip covered his signature. He complained bitterly to Hugh Roberts, [the] architect, who told Pyle that his signature was small and that the workmen never noticed it.

Pyle and Roberts "had words" according to witnesses, but Millet stepped in and smoothed things over. Pyle then signed his name in letters four inches high, saying that Roberts could see the letters without his glasses. The mural is believed to be the only Pyle mural with double signatures.

Artist Charles Yardley Turner putting finishing touches on his Gen. Washington mural on the fourth floor, twitted Pyle by painting his name in letters five inches high.

Really, the signature trouble was a minor annoyance compared to the other issue, as seen in this simulated before-and-after of "Stuyvesant":

Here it is in context. (More photos of the place are here.)

Of course, Pyle would have radically changed his composition had he been informed of the pending duct work. In reviewing the building, Architects’ and Builders’ Magazine for November 1910 lamented, "In the Freeholders’ room, the charm of which beggars description, the marring of the magnificent mural decorations by ventilator openings is most regrettable, and should have been avoided at any cost."

Incidentally, adding insult to injury, dark brown drips of dirty water (or something) were oozing down the pictures from the vents when I saw them last, about ten years ago.

And I should say here that while I admit I'm genetically predisposed to like super-oblong pictures, I disagree with Wyeth's above assessment. I think "Stuyvesant" - and "Hendryk Hudson" for that matter - are strongly composed, nicely realized, and refreshingly different from many murals of the era which are often packed with idealized figures, statically posed in shallow space.

On the other hand, Wyeth's criticisms could apply to the third and biggest mural, "Life in an Old Dutch Town," which is far from Pyle at his best. As it happened, it went up weeks after the courthouse opened, and, for all Pyle's prepping, he made costly eleventh-hour changes to it.

"I think they are fairly good in certain ways, but are not so decorative as I hoped they would be," Pyle summed up to fellow artist Edwin Howland Blashfield (and he later told Arthurs that he had "lost money" on the deal, though I haven't checked his math). Frank Millet more bluntly confided (also to Blashfield), "Pyle’s things are a great disappointment to the architect and Mr. Gill [the contractor for the interior work]. I say nothing, but I think he has made a mistake in his scheme and in his color."

Well, maybe. Two out of three ain't bad, I say. And perhaps Pyle's wrathful ventilator venting poisoned the opinions of Roberts and Gill.

Not long after the end of the project, in November 1910, Pyle sailed to Italy to better prepare himself for the next mural commission - which never came.