September 4, 1871

I’m interrupting my planned follow-up post to present this...

Today is the 139th anniversary of the first known appearance in print of a Howard Pyle work. He made this rather crude drawing for the masthead of the inaugural issue of Every Evening, a Wilmington newspaper, and it was featured for the next two years.

As far as I know, Pyle, out of embarrassment or forgetfulness, never mentioned it later in life and it eluded the otherwise 90+ percent comprehensive bibliography assembled by Willard S. Morse and Gertrude Brincklé in 1921. It was credited, however, otherwise it’s creator would never have been known:

And, as luck would have it, it also garnered the first known critical review of a Pyle work. The following appeared in the issue of September 6, 1871:

As the editor helpfully noted, “But is he smoking a cigar?” Lavinia, it seems, misread the father’s handlebar mustache.

August 26, 1876: Part Two

Here’s some more about Howard Pyle’s letter of August 26, 1876...

First off, Pyle used fugitive ink to write this one, or else the ink was pale or diluted to begin with. Also, although the letter is dated August 26 - a Saturday - the envelope is postmarked 10 p.m. August 28. So there’s a chance he got the date wrong (not unusual for him), or he missed Saturday’s mail and couldn’t mail it Sunday, then forgot to post it until late Monday, or some such scenario. Pyle was 23 years old, then, and living with his parents at 917 Market Street in Wilmington; presumably he wrote the letter there.

The addressees are the Misses Alice and Sallie Cresson. Alice Hannum Cresson was born December 24, 1848, in Philadelphia. In 1876 she was living with her parents, Walter and Alice (Hannum) Cresson, and sisters, Anna and Sarah, in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Alice’s maternal aunt, Hannah Hannum (1817-1896), had married Pyle’s uncle, John Painter (1824-1865), in 1845, so the “cousins” probably met as children. Sarah (Sallie) Cresson was born June 16, 1852, and closer in age to Pyle, but Alice seems to have interested him more: five of the six letters from this series are addressed solely to her. It’s not clear, though, if Pyle’s interest was romantic: his tone tends to be playful, sometimes flirty, but never ardent - except in jest.

In summertime, Pyle and various relatives and friends would often escape the confines of Wilmington for “Mansion Farm” in Owings Mills, Maryland. The four hundred acre estate on the Reisterstown Turnpike belonged to Pyle’s uncle, Milton Painter (1815-1888), and for many years it was the site of sundry family gatherings. The Delaware Historical Society has a great photograph taken on one of these summer outings of Pyle standing amongst - and towering over - a crowd of young folk (perhaps including the Cresson sisters) in the nearby woods.

The “Cameron” Pyle mentions was James H. Cameron, who lived with his father Dr. John Cameron, at 819 West 4th Street, Wilmington. Like Pyle, Cameron was a tenor, a Swedenborgian, and a member of the Friends’ Social Lyceum. He also took part in events organized by Pyle’s mother, including poetry readings and tableaux.

So here’s my transcription:

Wilmington Aug 26th / 76

Miss Alice & Sallie:

Dear Ladies:

“We note the passage of our life by its losses and neglects”; says a certain author, so do I recollect with real regret, my failure to meet you on your way home from Maryland.

Very possibly, - probably; perhaps it may be to you a matter of the utmost indifference; unfortunately for myself, I cannot look at it in that light; and I assure you frequently breathe words, I hope you never use, against that miserable engagement that detained me at the Newspaper Office, until half past one on that Tuesday when you passed through Wilmington.

I am in regard to the sentiments of my regret, very similar to the old fellow who when his wife died; with tears in his eyes thus expressed himself. “I have had many losses! I have lost crops; I have lost chickens; I have lost pigs; but I never had a loss like Maria!”

There is something rather comfortable in performing ones duty, and there is something decidedly comfortable in taking ones pleasure; but when they come upon one in conjunction, and opposed to each other; they produce an effect metaphorically speaking like good salt, and good coffee; which try and you will appreciate!

So was I situated when duty called me to make a visit to Chincoteague, and pleasure to Maryland, and many times when the mosquitoes were particularly troublesome, and the weather uncommonly hot; and when I contrasted my uncomfortable lot with the pleasant times I might have enjoyed in Maryland, I vowed to myself never in future to give duty the priority of position with pleasure.

You can believe; my dear ladies, that my cheerfulness was not at all heightened, when I, whilst desperately fighting mosquitoes, pictured to myself Cameron, sitting radiently on the gate-post; or when plowing hot, cross, and perspiring, through the shifting sand of Chincoteague, I saw in my imagenation all of you sitting, cosily chatting over your ice cream, on the shady breezy poarch [sic] of Mansion Farm. I was like starving Tantalus, whose misery was heightened by seeing the fruit he could not reach.

And so I have meandered dolefully to the close of my complaining letter; - pity ladies my disappointments of this summer! and believe me as ever

Yours Most Respectfully

Howard Pyle

“Disappointments,” indeed! Although Pyle disparages his Chincoteague trip, the article born out of it was key to his transitioning from clerk (or salesman, or whatever he was) in his father’s leather business to professional artist-author. At this very time, his “Chincoteague, Island of Ponies” was accepted for publication in Scribner’s Monthly and, as some of his illustrated fables had also been accepted by St. Nicholas, Pyle finally “felt my art was of some practical use. This was confirmed by Mr. Roswell Smith, who advised me through my father...to come to New York.”

All well and good. But what about “that miserable engagement that detained me at the Newspaper Office, until half past one on that Tuesday”? I’ll answer that in my next post.

August 26, 1876: Part One

I doggedly pursue Howard Pyle’s correspondence because even seemingly slight or unimportant letters can shed light on his life. Sometimes, too, they can create a snowball effect: a passing reference to a name or an event can open up vast new lines of research.

A little over fifteen years ago I came across a cache of seven letters by Pyle, written when he was 22 and 23 years old. Deciphering his quirky handwriting and occasional misspellings and then following up on the people and places and goings-on mentioned kept me busy for weeks - months, in fact - and I still find myself filling in persistent gaps now and then.

I’ll touch on all of these curious epistles in future posts, but here’s one, written on this day in 1876. See if you can figure out what it says. I’ll present my transcription and more details about it soon...

And here is Part Two.

The Pyle-Parrish Connection

Did Maxfield Parrish actually study with Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in the winter of 1894-95? The topic has been debated over the years and James Gurney presents some evidence sort of against the notion, via Frank Schoonover. But Schoonover, who entered Pyle’s class at Drexel in Fall 1896, is not always a reliable witness. So, here is some opposing evidence from the horses’ mouths, as it were...

The Delaware Historical Society owns a draft of a letter Pyle wrote in December 1905, while negotiating with S. S. McClure about taking over the art editorship of McClure’s Magazine (as well as a larger scheme that never took off). In it, Pyle states:

It so happens that for years I have been teaching my pupils that that which really counts in the work of a true artist is not so much the ability to draw well and to paint well as it is to say something from the heart concerning Nature and humanity and in saying that thing so strongly that it shall make a vital appeal to other men and women, even if they do not know much about the technical excellencies of art.

The result of this plan of education has been that my pupils have been almost unusually successful in their work. For I have been able to train such artists as Mr Parrish, Miss Green, Miss Smith, Miss Oakley, Mr Aylward, Mr Schoonover, Mr Wyeth, Mr Arthurs, Mr Oakley, etc etc. so that their work has made a distinct impression upon the world of American Art - at least of American Magazine Art.

So much for Pyle’s point of view. But Parrish, too, touched on the subject three different times in letters (now at the Delaware Art Museum) to Richard Wayne Lykes, author of the invaluable thesis, “Howard Pyle, Teacher of Illustration”:

I was in his class at the Drexel Institute for only a winter and did not have the chance to know him as well as members of his class which was formed afterwards.... It was not so much the actual things he taught us as contact with his personality that really counted. Somehow after a talk with him you felt inspired to go out and do great things, and wondered afterwards by what magic he did it... [March 28, 1945]

You see, I knew him impersonally for one winter in a rather large class, whereas those thirty members of his class at Chadds Ford had a chance during the five summers to get thoroughly acquainted with him.... I really could not say just what part of my training could be attributed to H.P. Inspiration perhaps more than anything... [April 9, 1945]

I wish I could tell you more of my association with H.P. - anecdotes and the like, I saw far less of him than the other students, and hardly had a chance to get acquainted. I’ve an idea I dropped out of that first class at the Drexel Institute before the end, no doubt to work on soap advertisements and worse, dreadful stuff, but wasn’t I glad to get them! I had one grand day with him when he invited me down to Wilmington, and we drove around the countryside. He was living then in the fine old house of Ambassador Byard (?) [sic: Bayard] After that I never saw him again. [January 15, 1948]

Incidentally, Pyle moved out of the Bayard house, “Delamore,” in (I think) April 1896, so the visit occurred sometime in 1895 or ’96. Parrish also noted in a January 10, 1951, letter to Thornton Oakley: “Yes, I was in Howard Pyle’s class at Drexel for a while.”

So there you go.

And it’s interesting to point out that - I’m pretty sure - Parrish and Pyle’s wife, Anne Poole Pyle, were blood relatives: first cousins twice removed, to be exact: Anne’s grandparents, William Poole and Sarah Sharples, were Parrish’s great-great grandparents.

Howard Pyle Meets Woodrow Wilson, August 25, 1895

On this day 115 years ago, Howard Pyle traveled from Delaware to New Jersey and met Woodrow Wilson (for the very first time!) to discuss his illustrations for the professor’s serialized biography of George Washington. The next day Wilson wrote to Henry Mills Alden, editor of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine:

…Mr. Pyle came to Princeton yesterday. His train was late in arriving and so he had to hurry away, so that we had very little time together; but I think we came to a perfect and very satisfactory understanding about the illustrations.…

Like this lovely interior scene: “Even Sir William Berkeley, the redoubtable Cavalier Governor, saw he must yield” (published in the January 1896 Harper’s). You can see the original oil (15.25 x 23.5") at the Boston Public Library (that is, if they let you - I think an appointment is necessary) and you can see the unusual chair on the right at the Delaware Art Museum (sometimes, but maybe not all of the time). And you can see the boots on the gentleman in the foreground here, here, here, and here, among other places.

August 5, 1883

“On Saturday I resumed work upon the illustrated verse. It progresses much more slowly than I had hoped. The printing of the letters of the text takes a long time and I had several setbacks through mistakes.”

So said Howard Pyle in a letter to his wife, Anne (then at her family's “cottage” in Rehoboth, Delaware), on Sunday, August 5, 1883. The “illustrated verse” to which he refers was, I assume, “Ye Romantic Adventures of Three Tailors,” the first in a series ultimately collected in the book Pepper and Salt in 1885. (The “mistakes” didn’t include reversed apostrophes, apparently.)

The idea for the series had come to Pyle a few weeks before: on July 8 he told Anne:

I wrote a verse for Harper’s Young People which I propose making into a full page. If Harpers should take to it, as I hope they will, I propose writing a number of similar bits (say fifty) and turning them into a child’s gift book next Christmas a year, first publishing them in Young People.

He updated her on August 3:

This morning I started drawing that series of full-page pictures with verses that I hope to do for Young People, to be published ultimately in book form. I told you yesterday how I hammered away at the verses and only hit one late in the afternoon. I hope that they may be successful: I did hard conscientious work today but got only a very little done.... This afternoon I had a sort of discouraged fit, for the work I was doing seemed so puerile and childish but I feel differently now, for after all no work conscientiously done is “childish”...

As Pyle had already started the illustration, he was probably “hammering away” at subsequent verses (for “Two Opinions,” say, or “A Victim to Science,” the next to be published). “Ye Romantic Adventures of Three Tailors” appeared in Harper’s Young People for August 28, 1883, which actually came out about a week earlier, say August 21 or 22, so only about two weeks would have been allowed for production: photo-engraving the plate, printing, stitch-binding the covers, packing, and shipping the magazine. An awfully tight, but entirely possible schedule for Harper and Brothers, which had its own printing plant and bindery on the premises at Franklin Square.

August 2, 1898

While the 1898 Drexel Institute Summer School of Illustration dominated Howard Pyle’s time, he had still commissions to fill. In addition to work for Harper and Brothers (and, quite likely, Collier’s Weekly), Pyle needed to press on with his ambitious series of paintings for “The Story of the Revolution” by Henry Cabot Lodge, then running in Scribner’s Magazine. He made twelve pictures in all and although they were printed in black and white, he painted them somewhat larger than usual and in full-color (in hopes that they would be purchased en masse and hung in the new Library of Congress building in Washington - which unfortunately never happened).

Some of the set are well known, some not so much. “Arnold Tells his Wife of the Discovery of his Treason” is one of the latter category, unjustly, perhaps, but understandably, compared to the dynamically sweeping likes of “The Battle of Bunker Hill” and “The Battle of Germantown” (a.k.a. “The Attack Upon Chew House”). On August 2, 1898, Pyle wrote to Joseph Hawley Chapin, then Scribner’s relatively new art editor:

…After many delays and a great deal of worry on my part, I am sending you today my picture of Benedict Arnold. I trust you may find it to your mind, for I have expended much thought and great care upon it. I think it has some dramatic intent.

It represents the scene where Arnold, having received the letter acquainting him with the capture of André, tells his wife of his discovered treason and of the necessity of his immediate escape. She sinks fainting at his feet and he stands over her contemplating the ruin of his own life. In this moment of despair and ruin the supreme egotism of the man was very apparent. The account says he stopped only a moment to raise his unconscious wife and to lay her upon the bed, then without calling for assistance or giving any further aid to her he went down stairs, bade adieu to his guests at the breakfast table, mounted a horse belonging to one of his guests and rode away to where his boat was waiting to carry him to the English sloop-of-war, Vulture.

I have tried to represent in his face his own supreme self-concentration…

I’m under the impression that Pyle's brother Walter's owned this, but now the original (36 x 23.75") belongs to the Brandywine River Museum, just down the road from where it was painted in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

July 27, 1895

“Your spiritual writings haunt me like personal experiences.”

William Dean Howells to Howard Pyle, July 27, 1895

What, Do You Think You’re Dewing?

“Thereupon the poor woman screamed aloud, and cried out that he was a Murderer” from the short story “Retribution” by Howard Pyle in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for April 1893.

This bears more than just a superficial resemblance to Thomas Wilmer Dewing at his ethereal foggiest. Of course, the overall effect owes much to the wood engraver F. H. Wellington, who may well have struggled to capture Pyle’s subtle shifts in tone on a 6.8 x 4.8" block. But still...

One day the original black and white oil will surface and then we can really see how it compares with, for example, Dewing’s “Summer” (1890) or “The Song” of 1891, or “In the Garden” (1892-94). The two artists had friends in common and must have been aware of each other’s work, but I have yet to find evidence that puts them in the same place at the same time.

July 9, 1899

Turner’s Mill, Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania, Summer 1898 or 1899

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 9, 1899:

...A summer school of quite a unique order is the Chadd’s Ford School, taught by Howard Pyle and officially known as the “Drexel Institute Summer School of Illustration.” This school is peculiar in that its membership is limited to ten and these ten students are all scholarship students whose tuition, board and lodging are paid for by the institute. Mr. Pyle, who is always busy with his own work, has not time to give to more pupils than these.

The Drexel Institute, in providing this school for its prize pupils - presumably the best workers in its art classes - has made sure that there will be no back sliding, because of desultory summer work, from the high standard established in its winter school.

The school is, before everything else, a school of illustration and the ten young illustrators are engaged in the practice of their profession quite as legitimately as though they were even now pegging away in a hot city studio. Most of them are filling orders for publishing houses and doing besides the regular work of the class.

The setting of this school is charming and its quiet rural beauty offers no distraction from the classroom requirements. The studio work room is an old ivy-covered mill, within whose cool and shaded walls there still clings an odor of grain. Here the “ten” work each day from 8 o’clock until 5, long hours for summer time, when any work drags. When the day’s work is ended - and they know that time by the tinkle of bells of the home-coming cows - they wash their brushes in a neighboring stream, stow away their painting paraphernalia behind doors and on shelves, mount their bicycles and disperse for the night. The men of the school lodge at a small country hotel in Chadd’s Ford, and the girls keep house in a quaint old farm house, used long ago as Lafayette’s headquarters during the Battle of Brandywine.

The recreations of this little group of workers are all pastoral. The milking of the cows forms an important episode in the day, and now and then they help in the harvesting of crops. On pleasant nights they ride their bicycles through the quiet country lanes, and when it rains they play hide and seek in the old mill. There is not much excitement there, it is true, but it is a healthful, happy, purposeful life, which send the students back to their homes with no regrets over a wasted summer....

“...they wash their brushes in a neighboring stream...”

And Here’s to You, Mrs. Zadel B. Gustafson

“The old man's face changed suddenly, and he pressed his hand hard upon the arm of the hair cloth sofa” by Howard Pyle for “A Modern Puritan” by Mrs. Zadel B. Gustafson (Harper's Weekly, April 15, 1882), ink on bristol board, 8 7/16 x 10 13/16 inches.

As with “Jeremy Black” and “A Perfect Christmas,” this is an unusual - or unexpected - Pyle illustration: a present-day setting and pen-work more commonly associated with, say, Pyle’s friends Edwin Austin Abbey (see this, for example), or Arthur B. Frost (his more staid work, not his humorous things so much), or Charles Stanley Reinhart. But Pyle’s drawing technique was in a transitional or at least an experimental phase in the early 1880s; it was dexterous, but not as stylized or distinctive as it would soon become.

Although it’s difficult to show here, rather than using white paint to correct his drawing, Pyle scraped in corrections and certain highlights with a pen-knife - a not uncommon practice for him.

And I wonder if Pyle’s wife, Anne, posed for the young woman, whom she resembles: after all, his workspace was then in his mother-in-law’s (now long gone) house at 207 Washington Street, Wilmington, Delaware, and I assume he enlisted family members to model for him now and then.

Incidentally, novelist, journalist, poet, and women’s rights activist Zadel Turner Barnes Buddington Gustafson (1841-1917) was the grandmother of writer Djuna Barnes.

Some of Thornton Oakley's Pyleana

The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (or PACSCL) has embarked on the "Hidden Collections in the Philadelphia Area: A Consortial Processing and Cataloging Initiative" Project. One of the "hidden" is the Thornton Oakley Collection of Howard Pyle and His Students at the Free Library of Philadelphia. A recent blog post talks about processing the abundant accumulation, which Oakley donated to the library before his death. And they posted pictures, which can also be viewed at Flickr. Of particular interest (to me) are:

• A photograph of Pyle and his students at Turner's Mill in Chadd's Ford taken (by my calculations, at least) in late June or early July of 1902. Standing, from left to right, are: Gordon McCouch, Ethel Franklin Betts, Howard Pyle, Francis Newton (with boater), William Aylward, Ernest J. Cross, Henry Peck, Walter Whitehead (on bicycle), and Arthur Becher. Seated are: Allen True, Harry Townsend, Philip Goodwin (in cap), Clifford Ashley (bareheaded), Thornton Oakley (just behind Ashley), and George Harding. It's the best version of this photo that I've seen.

• A photograph titled (in Oakley's hand) "The Mill / Chadds Ford / Destroyed by fire / January, 1953." Just too sad.

• A collection of Pyle signatures, cut from cancelled checks after his death. I've seen similar items glued into books, catalogues, and onto unsigned sketches, etc. A handy way to create a posthumously "signed" item.

• One of Frances Benjamin Johnston's photographs of Pyle, taken in Washington, D.C., in the winter of 1896.

• An early Pyle original in the rough. He made it in the summer or fall of 1878 for the Delaware-themed article in his three-part series, "A Peninsular Canaan" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, July 1879). "In the Northern Market: 'Peaches one cent'" is its published title. Here it's labeled in Pyle's hand: "Peaches! Cent a piece!" and it seems to be a combination of pencil, ink, and gouache.

• And I can't quite tell what this is. The image, titled "The Minute Man," was used on the cover of Collier's Weekly for February 17, 1906. But is it the original art? It looks like watercolor on paper. I can't tell from here. [NOTE of July 8, 2010: This is not the original art: it differs in detail from the cover and the cover seems to be more thickly painted in oil - and it's also better executed than this and more obviously Pyle's handiwork. So what is this? A photographic print of Pyle's original, hand-colored by someone else?]

Great stuff all around. I hope they show some more.

Howard Pyle's Proto-Vuvuzela?

Almost, but not quite - as you'll discover when you read the accompanying, oddly-metered verse. "Jeremy Black's Fourth of July" by Howard Pyle appeared in Harper's Young People for July 5, 1881 (the issue, unlike this post, was wisely published before Independence Day). As far as I know, it never came out in book form, though it was later reprinted in The Albany Evening Journal for July 27, 1901. July 27th? Now I don't feel so bad.

I've always loved this unusual drawing and its scratchily confident lightness of touch, compared to Pyle's somewhat heavier, or more "deliberate" pen-and-inks for Robin Hood and Pepper and Salt, which began to emerge from his studio a few years later. It's similar to the one for - and dates from the nearly the same time as - A Perfect Christmas, but it's also very A. B. Frost-y and shows that Pyle was indeed influenced by his good friend and the best man at his recent nuptials (i.e. April 12, 1881).

If only vuvuzelas or lepatatas (if you prefer) sounded like the Thing, we all would be much happier.

"And blew as he'd not blown since he was born" by Howard Pyle

Jeremy Black's Fourth of July
by Howard Pyle

"I'll make a noise," said Jeremy Black,
As the days drew nigh
To the Fourth of July;
"I'll make more noise than a cannon, or pack
Of fire-crackers, or pistol, or gun,
Or cannon-cracker; I'll have more fun,
With fifty cents, than the rest of the boys
With a dollar's worth of powder and things -
With fifty cents I will make more noise
Than all the rest of the town, by jings!"

So he went down
To Abraham Brown,
The tinker back of the Blue Bell Inn,
Who mended the pans for all the town,
And he got him to make a Thing of tin.
Then both of them tinkered and talked and planned,
Between the mending of pot and kettle,
And drew the patterns with chalk in hand,
Until they managed the thing to settle;
And all the boys were eager to know
What kind of a Thing they kept tinkering so.
Was it anything like a cannon, or rocket.
Or Roman candle, or pin-wheel, or gun?
Was it small enough to go into his pocket?
Or could he lift it when it was done?
Would the thing go off, or would powder go in it?
And a dozen of such like questions a minute.
But Jeremy Black just gave a sly wink,
And they could not tell what in creation to think.

So Fourth of July came around at last,
And the day was fresh and the sun was bright;
Then just as soon as the night was passed,
At the earliest dawn of the dewy light,
The boys turned out
With noise and rout,
And loud halloo and lusty shout,
And racket of crackers, and boom and pop,
And ringing of bells, and sizz and splutter,
Till good folks trying to sleep would stop,
And get up and close the window and shutter.
But Jeremy Black just turned in his bed,
And down in the pillow he nestled his head,
And thought, with a grin,
How the Thing of tin
Would make enough noise to drown the din.
At length he arose and dressed himself.
And afterward managed his breakfast to eat;
Then took the Thing from the wood-house shelf,
And carried it with him out in the street.
Now all the boys came running to see
What ever the wonderful Thing could be -
And, lo! 'twas a fish-horn six feet long.
"Now stand a little away," said he,
"And you'll hear a noise so loud and strong
And deep and mighty that it will drown
All popping of guns and cannons in town."
Then all the boys stood back, while he
Stepped up to the fire-plug under the tree,
And rested thereon the end of the horn,
Then took a breath that was long and deep,
And blew as he'd not blown since he was born;
And out from the Thing came - never a peep!
He stopped, and wiped his mouth for a minute,
Then blew as if the dickens were in it.
He blew till the hair stood up on his head;
He blew till everything swam around;
He blew till his forehead and ears grew red;
But out of the horn came - never a sound.

At first the boys were half afraid
Of the terrible sound that would soon be made;
But after a while they began to chaff,
And then to giggle, and then to laugh.
Poor Jeremy knew that the noise was there -
It only required a little more air.
Once more he blows, till his muscles strain:
Not a sound. And then he began to know,
Though he had endeavored with might and main,
The horn was too large for him to blow.

L'Envoi.

As one goes over this world of ours
One frequently finds a Jeremy Black,
Who overrates the natural powers
The Fates have granted him - somewhat slack.
Those people who build, though they may not know it,
A horn so large that they never can blow it.

Independence Day with Howard Pyle, 1902

Before the sulfurous smoke of the Fourth of July dissipates entirely, here's how Pyle student Allen Tupper True described the day at Chadd's Ford in 1902:

…We spent the 4th at Mr. Pyle’s and had a good time. After firing crackers and sending up balloons in the morning we had a nice lunch out on the lawn and in the afternoon besides some impromptu stunts by the fellows we had a ping pong tournament and a general good time. In the evening after a bread and milk supper we had some fine fireworks and then everyone came home tired. The whole entertainment was typically big heartedly American and I appreciate Mr. Pyle’s kindness.…

June 29, 1886: Master Jacob, Proto-Parrish

Howard Pyle's headpiece for his fairytale "Master Jacob," first published in Harper's Young People for June 29, 1886, and later (reduced and with new lettering by Pyle) in The Wonder Clock.

Beautiful pen-work with great design and characterization to boot.

This is where Maxfield Parrish came from.

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.

June 27, 1904

"Anyone looking at Remington’s work feels that he has breathed the air of the Plains, and is at home there. It is necessary either to have lived with these things you are going to picture or else, by the imagination, see them as though you had lived with them.

"Colonial life appeals so strongly to me that to come across things that have been handed down from that time fills me with a feeling akin to homesickness - so, that merely to pick up a fragment of that period is all that is necessary to bring before me that quaint life - and my friends tell me that my pictures look as tho’ I had lived in that time."

Howard Pyle as quoted by Ethel Pennewill Brown and Olive Rush, June 27, 1904

Decoration for “A Song of Peace”

Howard Pyle’s “decoration” for Edwin Markham’s poem, “A Song of Peace,” appeared in Collier’s Weekly for June 14, 1902. And 108 years ago today - on June 20, 1902 - Augustus Saint-Gaudens wrote a “fan” letter to Pyle (not the first time, either) about this piece, declaring, “…The virility and poetry and the beauty of it are remarkable…”

Unfortunately, Saint-Gaudens’ letter has gone missing and the only evidence of it we have is the above line, quoted by Charles Abbott in his 1925 Pyle biography. Pyle’s reply, however, written on June 24, resides at Dartmouth College. In it, he offers to give the drawing to Saint-Gaudens and asks if he should “fill it out to a large square, completing the figures in procession.” Pyle sent the drawing in July, but I don’t know if he reworked it - or if it was burned in the sculptor’s studio fire in 1904 - as it has yet to come to light.

Note: Since writing this I’ve learned that the drawing was loaned by Mrs. Augusta Saint-Gaudens to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1922, so perhaps it’s still out there, somewhere.

June 18, 1887

I hope this will make up somewhat for my long delay in posting anything - and for my even longer delay in posting a picture.

"'Boat ahoy!' I cried out, and then levelled my pistol and fired" appeared in Harper's Weekly for June 18, 1887. It illustrates Pyle's serialized pirate novel, The Rose of Paradise. The admirable but unsigned engraving measures 9.1 x 6.6 inches and is, I imagine, a much different animal than the as yet unlocated original which is either ink or watercolor wash on paper and measures about 10 x 15 inches.

I first saw this while rooting through the bins at Pageant Books and Prints, then near The Cooper Union in Manhattan. I think I actually staggered backward as though hit by a boom - and I still get a little seasick from its strength and simplicity. Although a finished picture, it calls to mind the Pylean epigram (via Charles DeFeo): "After the first half-hour of work, your lay-in should kill at a hundred yards."

May 11, 1906

“In Wilmington Lucia Guliana was placed on trial in the Federal Court on charge of having imported Rosa Caliente from Italy for immoral purposes. The girl was formerly an artist's model in Italy and one of the men summoned to serve on the jury is Howard Pyle, an artist, of Wilmington.”

The Reading [Pennsylvania] Eagle, May 11, 1906

April 30, 1893

"Illustration is such a dangerous thing. It is so apt to set the readers ideas into a fixed and hardened shape instead of allowing them to flow into and through the channel of words."

Howard Pyle to Mrs. Charles Fairchild, April 30, 1893

Willa Cather to Howard Pyle, April 26, 1906

"Will Mr. Howard Pyle accept through me the love and of seven big and little children to whom he taught the beauty of language and of line, and to whom, in a desert place, he sent the precious message of Romance."

Willa Cather to Howard Pyle, April 26, 1906, in a presentation copy of her book The Troll Garden

April 23, 1907

"I am in great danger of grinding out conventional magazine illustrations for conventional magazine stories. I feel myself now to be at the height of my powers, and in the next ten or twelve years I should look to do the best work of my life. I do not think that it is right for me to spend so great a part of my time in manufacturing drawings for magazine stories which I cannot regard as having any really solid or permanent literary value. Mr. [James Branch] Cabell’s stories, for instance, are very clever, and far above the average of magazine literature, but they are neither exactly true to history nor exactly fanciful, and, whilst I have made the very best illustrations for them which I am capable of making, I feel that they are not true to medieval life, and that they lack a really permanent value such as I should now endeavor to present to the world."

Howard Pyle to Thomas Bucklin Wells (assistant editor at Harper's Monthly Magazine), April 23, 1907

A Certain Howard Pyle Fan

This blog is all about Howard Pyle. But the other important artist in my life - really, the most important artist and the most important man in my life - has been and forever will be my father, John Schoenherr. He was a Pyle fan since childhood and he introduced me to Pyle's work when I was a boy.

I've written something about him here.

Queen Esther, 1902

Readers of Scribner's Magazine for April 1902 must have been startled on seeing "Queen Esther inciting the Indians to Attack the Settlers at Wyoming." It's certainly one of Howard Pyle's spookier images.

It illustrates Alfred Mathews' article "A Story of Three States" and the original oil was exhibited in 1903 and '04, then went missing. I gather its palette is similar to that of its companion piece, "The Connecticut Settlers entering the Western Reserve" (now at the Brandywine River Museum): black, white, and red oils loosely painted over an umber imprimatura. An engraver touched up the halftone plate - particularly in the foreground, skirt, headdresses - making the reproduction surprisingly crisp. And the red is much more fiery than it is here (I can't figure out why my scans "dull down" when I save them for the web).

The "Wyoming" in the title doesn't refer to the state, but to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, site of a Revolutionary War battle (and massacre) in the Summer of 1778. A note on the plate states, "The figure to the right is [Joseph] Brant, and the white man is [Colonel John] Butler." Pyle probably worked from this image of Brant.

April Fools from Howard Pyle, Part 4

I’m overwhelmed by fools - Howard Pyle’s fools, I mean: he just drew and painted too many to show all at once. But here’s one more, in yet another medium and style. It’s from “The Castle of Content” by James Branch Cabell (Harper’s Monthly Magazine, August 1903). It was titled “He thought of his love” in the magazine, but was exhibited as “Idleness.“ I saw the original oil a few years ago and noticed that it had been unscrupulously cut down (to fit a frame, probably!) and that the colors of the fool’s tights were reversed. I gather that Pyle, in his haste to finish, forgot which leg was green and which one was red and that the printer corrected his mistake.

April Fools from Howard Pyle, Part 3

This fool - a detail from the illustrated verse “Venturesome Boldness” (Harper’s Young People, August 26, 1884) - has the distinction of being one of Howard Pyle’s earliest known “fool” pictures and also one of his earliest known self-portraits. Yes, that him on the right. The same character appeared two months before in “Serious Advice” in Harper’s Young People for June 24, 1884, (but of that the less said the better) and in various illustrations after, including the frontispiece of Pepper and Salt.

April Fools from Howard Pyle, Part 2

This fool - or jester, if you will - is from Erik Bogh’s “The Pilgrimage of Truth” (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1900). Its title in the magazine was “Truth in the Fool’s Lodge,” but it was also exhibited as “Truth is Received by the Jester” and “Truth in House of the the Fool.”

Howard Pyle made this during the summer of 1900, while he was living, working, and teaching at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania. In fact, he made at least three versions of this scene (I think I’ve only seen this one, so I don't know how the others differ) as he struggled to find a medium which could be reproduced successfully. “I have had great difficulty with the Christmas work I am doing for Harpers,” he grumbled on August 3th. “It will have to be redrawn and will occupy me I think almost the entire month to finish the work.” And on September 7th he was still cranky: “The Christmas pictures, which were delaying me, took so much longer for me to do than I had expected that I am thrown back nearly a month in my work.”

April Fools from Howard Pyle, Part 1

Well, this fool is not from April per se, but from "The Quaker Lady" by S. Weir Mitchell (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, November 1890). Pyle painted the original in wash (ink, methinks) and Albert M. Lindsay engraved it on wood - about 1.25 x 1.25 inches.

April 1, 1901: Woodrow Wilson to Howard Pyle

"Tory Refugees on their way to Canada" by Howard Pyle (1901)

Although the second collaboration of Howard Pyle and Woodrow Wilson was not as “intense” as the first (on “George Washington” in 1895-96), “Colonies and Nation” still generated a fair amount of correspondence. “It seems extremely pleasant to be writing to you again in collaboration of such interesting work,” Pyle wrote in the fall of 1900. “It was exceedingly pleasant to see your name on an envelope again,” concurred Wilson, and over the next six months at least a dozen letters (and certainly more than that, though they have yet to resurface) travelled between Wilmington and Princeton as the two hammered out what pictures would best suit the text. (Apparently, too, Wilson himself visited Pyle at his studio on the morning of December 7, 1900.)

“I remember in our work upon the History of the Life of Washington you specified your subjects and I upon my part after carefully reading the manuscript was allowed to give my ideas concerning them from the standpoint of an illustrator,” Pyle had reminded Wilson, not long after beginning his illustrations. That spring, while planning the last handful of pictures, Pyle asked if he could “amend” Wilson's list of subjects (which also hasn't yet surfaced) and paint “Washington refusing the offer to make him King” and a scene from Shays’ Rebellion as they “typify that period of Anarchy following the Revolutionary War so critical, apparently, to the life of the country.” Pyle also thought a depiction of Washington’s Inauguration would be appropriate. Here is Wilson’s answer, which shows the level of ease that had developed between the artist and writer:

**********

Princeton, New Jersey,

1 April, 1901.

My dear Mr. Pyle,

I literally have not had ten minutes to consider your letter of March twenty-eighth until this morning. I hope that you will pardon the delay.

I like two of the subjects you suggest very much indeed, but not the first. I should think it a little dangerous, historically, to make a scene out of Washington’s refusal to be made dictator. It was really an incident of correspondence. I should fear that, in making a picture of it, we should be in danger of putting in too large an imaginative element.

I had rather set my heart on having you do a group of emigrating loyalists in the northern forests, a subject that appeals greatly to the imagination; or one of your delightful character sketches of a rural group (this time on the western frontier) debating Jay's treaty.

The scene from Shays' rebellion and the inauguration of Washington I entirely like.

In haste,

With warm regard,

Sincerely Yours,

Woodrow Wilson

**********

In the end, Pyle did not paint Washington refusing to be made king, nor a scene from Shays’ Rebellion (though he had, indeed, depicted these two subjects in the 1880s), and his picture of the inauguration only appeared when Wilson’s papers were collected in book form. But his “Tory Refugees on their way to Canada” (above) and “A Political Discussion” appeared in Harper’s Monthly Magazine for December 1901.

And here is Wilson's original letter...