“The greater you are, the more folks envy you”

“I had enemies in my line” by Howard Pyle (1898)

More wonderful grouping from a “lost” Howard Pyle - well, “lost” inasmuch as the original, probably full-color oil painting has yet to surface.

“I had enemies in my line” illustrated “Where the Laborers Are Few,” one of Margaret Deland’s Old Chester Tales in Harper’s Monthly for October 1898. When published in book form, the picture was retitled, “‘The greater you are,’ said the acrobat, ‘The more folks envy you.’”

It takes a moment to register what’s going on and where - an accident in a circus - but then it all falls into place. And those little touches: the tiny umbrella poking up from the heaving crowd, the black top hat against the white dress, the slight curve of buttons on the ringmaster’s coat, the pole running up the left side of the picture.... I think Howard Pyle gives Edgar Degas a run for his money here. As William A. Coffin aptly wrote some six years before this was painted:

Above all, Mr. Pyle excels in composition, and there are very few among the many drawings from his hand that are not remarkable for effective arrangement. Ingenious grouping, dramatic concentration of interest on the principal figures, and clever management of light and shade to give his compositions breadth and unity of effect, are the qualities that most distinguish his work. It is needless to say that they are among the most essential ones in picture-making, and experience has taught him how to make the most of them to secure good results in reproduction, that ever important consideration to the illustrator.

“Looking into the Prussian Lines...”

“Looking into the Prussian Lines from the Château de la Muette” by Howard Pyle (1886)

Speaking of Howard Pyle’s penchant for nicely unexpected grouping, here’s another example. He painted it in the fall of 1886 for E. B. Washburne’s “The Siege and Commune of Paris” (Scribner’s Magazine, February 1887). Pyle could do such amazing things inside the confines of a square (or almost a square).

“Looking into the Prussian Lines from the Château de la Muette” illustrates the following passage taken from the diary Washburne - then President Grant’s Minister to France - kept during the Franco-Prussian War:

Thursday, 5 p.m., January 19, 1871.

123d day of the Siege.
15th day of the Bombardment.

This is the day of the great sortie. At this hour nothing is known of results, but it has undoubtedly been the bloodiest yet seen about the walls of Paris. The great fighting seems to be between St. Cloud and Versailles, or rather to the north of St. Cloud. It is said, however, that other parts of the Prussian lines have been attacked also, but I hardly believe it; but the attack has been terrific on St. Cloud. At 2.30 p.m. Colonel Hoffman and myself went to the Chateau de la Muette, in Passy, which is the headquarters of Admiral de Langle. This is a historic chateau once owned by the Duke of Orleans, Philip Egalite, and where he held high carnival. Nature made it a magnificent spot, elevated and beautiful, and it was adorned by everything that money and taste could supply. It is now owned by Madame Erard, the widow of the celebrated piano manufacturer. From the cupola of this chateau is the most magnificent view on that side of Paris, and it was there that we went to look through the great telescope into the Prussian lines. We found there M. Jules Favre [the bearded man, pointing], Ernest Picard, Minister of Finance, M. Durey, the Minister of Public Instruction under the Empire, Henri Martin, the French historian, and others....

Pyle’s original painting in black and white oil (about 13 3/8 x 14 1/2") can be seen at the Delaware Art Museum.

“Washington Firing the First Gun at the Siege of Yorktown”

“Washington Firing the First Gun at the Siege of Yorktown” by Howard Pyle (1898)

Such nicely abstract grouping by Howard Pyle here. But “Washington Firing the First Gun at the Siege of Yorktown” - the eleventh in his celebrated series illustrating Henry Cabot Lodge’s “The Story of the Revolution” - is not very well known these days. Pyle most likely painted this at Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1898 and it appeared in Scribner's Magazine that November. Subsequently, I assume, the full-color oil on canvas (about 36 x 24") was trundled around the country as a part of Scribner’s traveling “Revolutionary Pictures” exhibition, and perhaps it was sold somewhere along the way, since the original has yet to turn up.

“Washington in the Garden at Mount Vernon”

“Washington in the Garden at Mount Vernon” by Howard Pyle (1896)

What was on the mind of Howard Pyle - then in the midst of illustrating Woodrow Wilson’s biography of George Washington - 115 years ago today?

...I would represent Washington in his rural life at Mount Vernon. I am informed that the box-walk at Mount Vernon is now very much as it was in Washington’s day. It is very picturesque, and it would be interesting to place Washington in it as a setting.

Perhaps a good arrangement of this idea would be in the visit of Lafayette to Mount Vernon. I would represent Washington as directing the old negro gardener in the setting out of some shrub or small tree, and Lafayette standing at a little distance looking on with a certain remote dignity, Mrs Washington, perhaps, standing with him. In this way we might not only represent the way Washington was sought after in his retirement by great folk, such as Lafayette, but also indicate the idea of his Cincinnatus character....

So Pyle wrote to Wilson on March 27, 1896. As you can see, he altered his concept by leaving Lafayette and Martha Washington out of the painting, which he completed sometime in April. The reproduction above comes from “First in Peace” by Woodrow Wilson (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, September 1896). When Pyle exhibited the painting the following year, he described it in the catalogues in this old-fashioned way:

Here we behold the great Soldier dwelling, Cincinnatus-like, amid those humble and bucolic Joys he held so dear, and to which he was so glad to return after the distracting Clamor of War. Of the Gardener to whom Washington is talking, the ingenious Professor Wilson says, “He agreed with Philip Barter that if he would serve him faithfully as gardener and keep sober at all other times, he would allow him four dollars at Christmas with which to be drunk four days and four nights, etc.”

The original 21 x 15" oil on board - painted in part color - belongs to the Boston Public Library.

And here is the garden from a different point of view, as seen in a turn-of-the-century postcard...

UPDATED June 1, 2011: Alas, Pyle’s low, snaking boxwoods are incorrect (though, in his defense, he was going on the limited information available to him at that time). The History Blog points out in a new post that Washington’s garden was a much different animal.

Still in Howard Pyle’s Studio

Olive Rush and Ethel Pennewill Brown in Howard Pyle’s Studio in 1911 or 1912 (Blanche C. Grant, photographer)

I was looking for this picture in connection with my last post, but couldn’t find it at first since it’s not in the Olive Rush Papers, but in the Miscellaneous Photograph Collection at the Archives of American Art. It’s described there as “Olive Rush (at left) c. 1908” by an unidentified photographer. But the woman on the right is definitely Ethel Pennewill Brown and the photographer is Blanche C. Grant - her head and shoulder are reflected in the mirror as she stoops over the unseen camera. Grant took the picture when she was sharing Howard Pyle’s Wilmington studio with Brown and Rush in 1911 and possibly part of 1912.

The setting is the small anteroom through which one would pass after coming in the front door and before entering the studio proper. On the right is a “Rare Old Tyrolean Cabinet, carved Italian walnut, fitted with pewter basin and fount” that was Lot 161 in the auction of Pyle’s estate in June 1912. (It went for for $185.) And in the mirror is Pyle’s original pen and ink drawing, “Sir Kay showeth the mystic Sword unto Sir Ector,” from The Story of King Arthur.

“Sir Kay showeth the mystic Sword unto Sir Ector” by Howard Pyle (1902)

In Howard Pyle’s Studio, 1911

Ethel Pennewill Brown in Howard Pyle’s studio, 1911

Olive Rush, Blanche Grant, and Ethel Pennewill Brown in Howard Pyle’s studio, 1911

Before leaving for Italy in November 1910, Howard Pyle asked his student Ethel Pennewill Brown if she and her friend and fellow-student, Olive Rush (then in Paris), would rent his studio while he was gone. It would cost $50 a month - too much money, in Rush’s view - but Brown accepted Pyle’s offer. Rush was “amazed” by Brown’s action, but was able to rationalize it: “I suppose she could hardly refuse - when he insisted that we take it whether we pay all up or not - after all his former kindnesses it might have seemed ungrateful.”

Indeed, rent was not non-negotiable: some months later, even, Pyle reassured Brown, “I want you to pay me whatever you feel that you can afford upon it. I want at any rate for you to have the studio, and I would rather that you should have it for nothing at all than that it should go into other and stranger hands.”

Rush, however, had to back out of the plan (temporarily, at least, since she needed to hurry from Europe to Indiana and care for her dying mother) and another artist, Blanche Chloe Grant (1874-1948), stepped in. Grant was a stranger to Pyle, but not to Brown, who had met her the previous winter at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Fortunately, one hundred years ago today - March 11, 1911 - the newspaper Every Evening described what Pyle called the “girls’ settlement” at 1305 Franklin Street:

...Even though the master is away, art goes on in Wilmington just the same. The atmosphere remains and there is yet Mr. Pyle’s studio with some of his immortal pen and inks hanging on the wall above the Franklin stove, a few oils on the walls, and there are his “properties,” generously left for the common good. He always did lend generously of himself and his substance, and now that he is removed to a distant land, there is still recourse to his possessions, albeit the studio is now given over to the woman in art. Mr. Pyle never has favored the woman for painting, but he always recognised ability, and far from putting obstacles in the way, made the path of true merit and devotion to work as easy as his advice would make it....

Who couldn’t work in the very “Holy of Holies,” the “Sanctum Sanctorum?” The very air bespeaks the presence of Mr. Pyle and emits the elixir that feeds ambition and spurs one on to deeds of art. Miss Grant came to this city about two weeks after Mr. Pyle went abroad, but she feels the influence and has not regretted the choice of her workshop. It had been arranged that Miss Olive Rush would be with Miss Brown, but on her return from Europe, early in December, it was necessary for Miss Rush to go to her home in Indiana; hence Miss Grant’s opportunity.

There is always a wholesome respect and a little awe for Mr. Pyle’s possessions, and everybody takes the best care of his furniture and his effects in general. The studio is “homey” and “comfy” and many drop in, artistic and otherwise. On Saturday nights the gathering devotes its time to sketching, and all the women artists come to draw friends who love to pose for them. On Wednesday nights it’s musical, and the laity join with knights and ladies of the brush. The piano and the violin sound through the lights and shadows of the studio and all is merry within. There is light for the players and gloom for the audience if they seek the south room or the recesses of the high-backed settle before the chimney place. Mr. Pyle’s writing room, up the little stairway, is a fine place for playing that you’re Barbara Frietchie or to wave your handkerchief to Romeo....

And perhaps even more fortunately, somebody took photographs of the studio while Brown, Rush, and Grant were staying there. The ones shown here come from the Olive Rush Papers at the Archives of American Art and more can be seen in Box 6, Folders 7 and 8, conveniently digitized (but not very well labeled) here.

John G. Weller and Ethel Pennewill Brown posing in Howard Pyle’s studio, 1911

Howard Pyle is 158 Today

Howard Pyle (1896) by Frances Benjamin Johnston

It’s Howard Pyle’s 158th birthday today. If you’re curious about where exactly he was born, take a look at last year’s birthday post for my theory.

On Pyle’s 43rd birthday in 1896, he wrote to Frances Benjamin Johnston, who, a few weeks earlier, had taken several photographs of Pyle (including the two shown here) at her studio at 1332 V Street in Washington, D.C.:

I have received the very beautiful photographs and they have already been much admired in my family.

They are exactly what I felt sure you would do, and whenever after this I want anything especially nice I will know to come to Washington to obtain it. I cannot say more in praise of them than that they are what I thought you would do....

Phoebe and I often speak of our very pleasant visit to you and hope some time in the not too far distant future to have the pleasure of again seeing you.

Howard Pyle and daughter Phoebe (1896) by Frances Benjamin Johnston

Washington’s Birth-Day

From  Harper's Weekly for March 4, 1882:

Washington’s Birth-Day
by Howard Pyle

The breakfast china stood in rows,
And all was smart and bright at home,
Where Patience stood in Sunday clothes,
Waiting for Jared Judd to come.

For it was Washington’s Birth-day,
And Jared was to take her down
To Bristol Township for to stay,
And see the doings in the town.

So up he comes, all sprucely dressed:
A finer sight you never see
Than Jared in his Sunday best,
With light blue coat and figured vest,
And splatterdashers to the knee.

Then Jared’s heart beat nation high,
As down they rode the turnpike way,
With Patience on the pillion nigh
Behind him, on the dapple gray.

The town with flags was all afloat;
They fluttered in the frosty air;
And all the men of local note
Were gathered there from everywhere.

And there they see the butchers’ stalls,
With “show beef” hung, and ribbons gay,
And flags tacked up against the wall,
Where sirloins stand in fat array.

The fife and drums are playing loud,
And likely girls the sidewalks hem,
And close behind the band, a crowd
Of men and boys march after them.

The drummers make a pesky noise,
The fifer fifes with might and main;
The girls laugh at the men and boys,
Then look away and laugh again.

And on the common, near at hand,
They’d brought the old town cannon out,
And built a ten-foot speeching-stand,
With flags and streamers hung about.

And there they see the train-band stout
All step about with measured tread,
While Captain Green gives orders out,
And marches boldly at their head.

And then Judge Dean he makes a speech,
While great men sit along the stand.
Says he, “The train-band men will teach
Our foes to shun our native land.”

At which all cheered; and Captain Bent
He jabbed a red-hot poker to
The cannon’s butt, and off it went,
Till't shook the folks all through and through.

It frightened Patience so, she caught
At Jared's arm and shook for fear;
And so he took her by, and bought
Her cooky-cakes and ginger-beer.

And so the holiday was passed;
And as the afternoon grew late,
He took her home, and said good-by,
And kissed her near the garden gate.

“...and followed by Washington’s Birthday”

“Enter Fourth of July bowing and followed by Washington’s Birthday” by Howard Pyle from “The Revolt of the Holidays” by E. I. Stevenson (Harper’s Young People, December 18, 1883).

Pyle, Lincoln, and Roosevelt

“Abraham Lincoln” by Howard Pyle (1907)

On this day 150 years ago - February 21, 1861 - President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived in Philadelphia en (circuitous) route to Washington, D.C.. After a 34-gun salute, he rode from the depot in an open barouche pulled by four white horses to the Continental Hotel as anywhere from 100,000 to a quarter of a million people cheered him on. Mrs. Margaret C. Pyle was one of the onlookers, having come up from Wilmington, Delaware, at the invitation of a friend.

Some 46 years later, Mrs. Pyle’s son Howard painted this illustration for “Lincoln’s Last Day” by William H. Crook (Harper’s Monthly Magazine, September 1907). During a visit to the studio, Mrs. Anna Roosevelt Cowles got to see the original oil on canvas, and Pyle reported to her younger brother, Theodore Roosevelt:

She appeared to be moved by the pathos of the image which I had attempted to depict, and I told her then that the inspiration of your tireless and energetic struggle for the benefit of a great people had had a large, if not a dominant, influence upon my presenting the picture of your great fellow-president.

You also will always be remembered as one who has given the best efforts of his life to the combatting of a gigantic evil and for the preservation of the best interests, and the enlargement of the future happiness of his fellow men.

The painting was subsequently sold in Chicago - possibly at an exhibition of Pyle’s works at Marshall Field & Company in December 1909 - and hasn’t been seen in public since then.

On the Bargello, 1911

“As to the Bargello, which was once the judgment hall and the state prison of Florence, but which is now a Museum, there are treasures beyond calculation - ancient arms and armor, ancient saddles, ancient carved ivories inlaid with gold and colored, old medals, and jewels, a single one of which would make an American feel rich in the possession of it - all these are crowded into half a dozen great rooms, through which one passes, and where they are exposed to view to all who come. During the week the charge of admission is a franc to each exhibition, but on Sundays admission is free, and then they are crowded with the plain people of Florence, soldiers and bourgeois, who gather there to see them.”

Howard Pyle to Stanley Arthurs, February 16, 1911

On the Palazzo Strozzi, 1911

“The Strozzi Palace is perfect, and is even yet lived in by a remnant of the Strozzi family. All around the palace there are link holes in the wall with great rings where those who lighted the links assisted themselves to climb to them; and the building itself is as fresh as though it were built five or ten years ago.”

Howard Pyle to Stanley Arthurs, February 16, 1911

A. B. Frost to Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle (right) in the summer of 1878 as depicted by his friend and fellow illustrator Arthur Burdett Frost (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, May 1879)

“I would love to go over the old times and the nice little sketching rambles we used to take, when we gathered cat-tails and scared the farmer by waving a big knife at him. I am pretty nearly as vigorous as I was then. I can stand a lot of hard walking with a gun and if it wasn’t for the rheumatism I think I am nearly as tough as I ever was.”

Arthur Burdett Frost to Howard Pyle, February 9, 1903

Howard Pyleiostro

“Mr. Pyle enjoys teasing the maids, especially Lina, just how he wants his egg, due minuti [e] mezzo; he will not learn Italian, found that inchiostro is Italian for ink, and adds iostro to everything.”

Gertrude Brincklé to an unidentified correspondent, February 4, 1911. (Not to be outdone, the Florentine servants addressed Mr. Pyle as “Signor PEE-lay.”)

“Morgan at Porto Bello” (and then New York)

Above is the earliest known letter written on this date by Howard Pyle. It is addressed to Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908), the “Banker-Poet” and one of the first seven men elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

For a couple of years, Pyle carried on a spirited correspondence with Stedman, who had been fortunate enough to have a few of his ballads embellished by Pyle. After seeing Pyle’s illustration for his poem, “Morgan,” (published in Harper’s Monthly for December 1888) Stedman wrote on July 20, 1888:

The drawing, or rather painting, is magnificent! Figures, faces, composition, all dramatically fine, and catching the spirit of the ballad at its most characteristic point. ’Tis a pity that this unique painting, which is the result of both talent and close labor, should have to be condensed into a page of Harper. Yet, it will be effective, even on that scale.

Yes, it is one of your very best, and will bear off the honors next December.

I suppose you own the painting, but I ought to. I wish I were able to pay your price for it, if you would permit it to go on my walls. When I see such a picture enriching my own verse, I feel more than ever the loss of my former means. Still, I will pinch a good deal in other directions, if you will name a price for it.

Pyle named $100. Stedman replied:

I am charmed that you are willing to sell me the “Morgan” cartoon, and at a price which I dare pay, and to obtain which (the amount) I shall write and sell a hundred dollar poem, between now and the date of its return to your possession. And if I had the means formerly at my command, I should tell you that you ought to have more for so successful and elaborate a picture. If then, you are willing to dispose of it to me, for the hundred dollars, please consider it sold. And when you deliver it, advise me as to the most appropriate frame for me to give it.

By late October 1888, the painting hadn’t yet made its way back to Pyle, who worried that Frank H. Wellington (who, incidentally, died after eating toadstools in Passaic, NJ, in 1911) may have “soiled” it while making the wood engraving for the magazine, and he begged Stedman to “let me slick my child up a little before he is finally presented to Metropolitan Society”:

Seriously, I have always felt a little bit shabby - a trifle hang-dog concerning that charge of a hundred dollars for a drawing which should unquestionably have belonged to you. So I would like to do all that I can to make it presentable and acceptable.

But Stedman told Pyle to “do that you choose, & I’ll be proportionately grateful.”

It took a while, but by January 28, 1889, Pyle had finished cleaning, repairing, retouching, re-varnishing, and framing the painting, and “Morgan” was on “his last cruise, perhaps,” to New York. Pyle also mentioned to Stedman that he was about to take a cruise of his own to the West Indies, “to follow in the footsteps of the redoubtable Welshman [i.e. Henry Morgan] and others of his kidney”:

Oh, that you were inspired to go along! What an opportunity to become acquainted with you as we cruised together through the Spanish Main and amongst those musty old towns that were one time the glory as they were the ruin of poor Mother Spain. My wife goes along with me.

Stedman jokingly warned Pyle of the “beautiful girls, of mixed breed & dubious character” in Panama, who “wear jasmines in their hair…& talk Spanish-Indian - but you are to take your family with you? If so, you are safe. However, the French invaders have probably taken all the poetry out of the place.”

And - to make a long-winded story short - Pyle replied on February 3, 1889:

Wilmington, Delaware

Feby. 3rd 1889

My Dear Mr Stedman: -

I am glad that your Morgan came at last - the hanging which he received was too good a fate for the like of him.

As for the frame - I may as well be frank at once - it was the making of it that delayed his final voyage to New York. To tell the truth I have always had a sneaking fondness for that particular offspring of mine, and it tickled a certain rib of self vanity to dress him in good clothes before I packed him off to his new home in great New York. Moreover I have always had an idea that black and white would look well set in a wooden mat. I hope you like the plan of so framing it and will pardon me if I have taken a liberty in putting a stick or two around the drawing instead of leaving it to your better taste.

I shall certainly endeavour to make the Panama trip that you advise - it sounds alluring enough. But as for the girls with jessamines in their hair, why, as I take my good wife with me and as in these seven years I have n’t found anyone that quite tickles my fancy as she does I hardly think that I shall leave the tiller and jump overboard at the beck of the “greaser” sirens.

I remembered your book-plate very well so soon as I laid eyes on it. It was published in the “Book-Buyer”, was it not? Honestly I like it much better than my own lucubrations, if I may so apply the word, it looks more like a real book-plate and less like a Christmas card.

I suppose that the Players will officially notify me if I am to be enrolled as one of them [They did so on February 11, 1889]. As for the book-plate, if they pass favorably upon it I hope that they will return it for corrections as soon as possible as I leave home on Saturday next.

Very Truly Yours

Howard Pyle

I might add that I’ve been able to bask in the glory of the original and I’ve sometimes wished that Pyle had followed Stedman’s advice and had made “a painting four times this size, from this fine study, possibly with more colors than black-and-white, for a large effect and for exhibition and sale.”

But he didn’t. And “Morgan at Porto Bello” - a relatively small, black and white thing at 15 x 24 inches - now resides in rural New Jersey.

“Morgan at Porto Bello” by Howard Pyle (1888)

“His niece had found him lying dead”

“His niece had found him lying dead” from the short story “A Life for a Life,” written and illustrated by Howard Pyle (Scribner’s Magazine, January 1900).

Morbid, but lovely - like many of Pyle’s best pictures. The “modern” setting is somewhat unusual, but we see here such Pylean tropes as the partially-obscured-body and something I’ve only just coined as “the paroxysmal hand.”

On the Duomo di Milano, 1911

“I do not care very much for professional sightseeing, but while I was in Milan, the hotel being near the Cathedral, I went there to see it. It is my first sight of a real mediaeval cathedral, and it is certainly very noble and picturesque. The carved fretwork around the top looked like lace, and the ugly gargoyles around the sides, supported by rather nice caryatids add to the lacework effect. It was very splendid, and very large. I admired it extremely.”

Howard Pyle to Stanley M. Arthurs, January 25, 1911

“Is that Howard Pyle?”

Photograph of Howard Pyle taken between December 11, 1887, and January 18, 1888

In December 1887, Edwin Wilson Morse, editor of The Book Buyer (“A Summary of American and Foreign Literature” published by Charles Scribner’s Sons), asked Howard Pyle to send a photograph of himself for use in the magazine.

“It has been years since I have had one taken,” Pyle replied on December 11, “but spurred by the compliment of your request I will visit a gallery at the very earliest opportunity and send you the result as soon as I receive it.”

When exactly Pyle visited a photographer is not known, but we do know that it was a little before January 18, 1888, when he wrote to a Mrs. Dickinson of Wisconsin:

A long while ago - March of last year - you wrote me a letter asking me for my photograph and autograph. My neglect to answer immediately arose not from indifference toward your request but because I had had no photograph taken for so long a time that I felt a reluctance to having myself projected upon material card-board, fearing the result. At last, however, I have had it done and such as it is I send it to you. I imagen to myself the little ones looking at it far away in Wisconsin. “What!” they cry, “is that Howard Pyle? Why; he is bald! He is grey! and - yes - if one looks closely enough one finds lines at the corners of his eyes that the photographer has forgotten to obliterate with his pencil!”

The Book Buyer, meanwhile, had a wood-engraving made from the photo, which appeared in the October 1888 issue. It accompanied a brief biographical sketch of Pyle, all part of Scribner’s campaign to promote his Otto of the Silver Hand, which came out that November (not to mention his The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and Within the Capes). Later, Scribner advertised that artist’s proofs of the portrait could be had for twenty-five cents and “Special Artist’s Proofs on India Paper” for fifty cents.

Pyle liked this engraving. In a letter of August 12, 1892, he said to Frank Nelson Doubleday (who also asked Pyle for a picture of himself for use in another project): “I think the portrait that you used in the Book Buyer is about as good as any that I have had taken - I suppose because it flatters me not a little.” See for yourself...

Howard Pyle, engraved for The Book Buyer (October 1888)

And here’s the article from The Book Buyer...

HOWARD PYLE

Howard Pyle began his career as an author under somewhat unusual circumstances. A number of years ago he heard of an island off the coast of Virginia where a peculiar breed of ponies ran in a semi-wild state. He visited the place, and wrote a paper upon it which he sent to Scribner's Monthly.

Following the advice of friends, who saw in this article the promise of better things, Mr. Pyle came to New York, and began to work with both his pen and his pencil. He had inherited from his mother a taste for both art and literature; and she, being a large reader of lighter literature, and a critic of keen perceptions, cultivated and directed this taste, thus exerting a marked influence in the formation of her son's intellectual character.

After coming to New York Mr. Pyle did a considerable amount of work more or less obscure, until finally he caught the attention of his brother artists by a more serious drawing than any he had yet undertaken. This was called “Wreck in the Offing!” and represented the interior of a life-saving station of the old style. A fellow in oil-skins and sou’wester has just flung open the door, in a gust of wind and rain, and shouts to his companions the startling words which form the title of the picture. This drawing was published as a double-page engraving in Harper’s Weekly, and brought Mr. Pyle at once into prominence.

Of late Mr. Pyle has been directing his attention more and more to book-making, writing and illustrating his own stories, and bringing all parts of the book into the closest harmony with the spirit of the tale. Being something of a bibliophilist, Mr. Pyle finds the creating of books to be, without question, his most congenial occupation. He has rarely painted for exhibition. The first book in which his skill as a story-teller and his talents as an illustrator became conjointly apparent was “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,” published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1883. His next book, a romantic sea story called “Within the Capes,” published by the same firm in 1885, was without illustrations. Following these two were “Pepper and Salt” (1886), a collection of fanciful tales and verses, and “The Rose of Paradise,” and “The Wonder Clock,” which were published by Harper & Brothers under date of 1888. Mr. Pyle's latest illustrated book is a romance of mediaeval Germany, entitled “Otto of the Silver Hand,” which is now in the press of Charles Scribner's Sons.

In 1879 Mr. Pyle returned to Wilmington, Del., where, by the way, he was born in 1853; and since then he has made his home there. He is a hard, though not a rapid, worker, and has won distinction as an illustrator by reason of the serious, earnest spirit that characterizes his drawings. He seems to have aimed for accuracy rather than for effect, as if with the idea that there should be more in a drawing than merely that surface work which tickles the fancy at the first glance, but stimulates no deeper train of thought. He has been especially successful in his representations of colonial life and mediaeval folk-lore.

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.)

Lunch at the White House, January 2, 1908

One of the several lunches Howard Pyle enjoyed at the White House occurred on this day in 1908. This time, Theodore Roosevelt hosted Pyle and his two eldest sons, Theodore, 18, and Howard Jr., 16, as well as Eugene A. Philbin and William Howard Taft, then Secretary of War.

Pyle was an ardent supporter of Roosevelt and Taft, and the propaganda he contributed to their respective campaigns in 1904 and 1908 helped both men get elected. After the latter beat William Jennings Bryan in November 1908, Pyle wrote to the President-elect:

I believe that the country will look to this epoch as one of the greatest in its history - first upon the heroic figure of Theodore Roosevelt inaugurating the new purposes of a new national life, and secondly upon you, who are so preeminently fitted for the task, carrying forward the work which he has so magnificently begun to an equally magnificent fullfilment [sic].

This I know you will do, just as the whole country knows that you will do it.

I do not know whether you will recollect that I and my two boys lunched in your company at the White House last December [sic], and that as we left the White House together I said to you that my two boys would not be able to vote for you this time but that they would both vote for you for a second term. You see that, under Providence, my prediction is in the way of being fulfilled.

Pyle could really lay it on thick, sometimes. While Taft thanked him for his “earnest and enthusiastic expressions of good will and of hopefulness for the coming administration,” he added, self-deprecatingly (if presciently), “I am a good deal in doubt about it myself, as I am under the load. I have got to do the best I can to lift it.”

In view of Taft’s abandonment of many of his predecessor’s policies, I wonder if Pyle’s enthusiasm ever waned - and (as I’ve mentioned elsewhere) I wonder what he would have made of the 1912 presidential race, had he lived to see it unfold.

Howard Pyle’s Early Impressions of Italy

Around Christmastime 1910, Howard Pyle was able to move his family from the cramped Pensione White “just on the outskirts of the slums” to “a suite of apartments in a very nice part of the city, where we shall be exceedingly comfortable, and where all the houses are new, and nice people live about us” at 6 Via Garibaldi. There, on December 28, he wrote about his as-yet ambivalent impressions of Italy to George Perkins Bissell, his friend back in Wilmington (who was also the brother of Emily Perkins Bissell):

I do not think an American of middle age who has spent practically all of his time in the United States should expect too much from Italy. As a rule, it is worn out and dilapidated, dirty and run down. Here in Florence, for instance, there are many old churches and many old palaces dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The churches are of black and white marble variegated with brown. They are dirty, stained and muddy with the dirt and dust of centuries: and personally I do not think anything of their architectural effect; but the insides of them are, in many instances, filled with treasures of art. The palaces every one look like prisons, and while inside there are fine carved pillars and some stunning stair cases, and court yards surrounded with coats-of-arms, yet outside they are gloomy and austere. They were nearly all of them built in the fourteenth century, and that was a time when every man’s hand was against every man, and every man’s hand against him: when the guards on the roofs used to shoot darts across the street at the guards on the other roofs, and every moment was the time of an assault. Many of these palaces are now converted into stores and market places, and a poor, homely, exceeding picturesque rabble down in the street below jostle and elbow one another; and there are butcher shops and drogherias (that is, rum shops) and there are bakers, and all sorts of nondescript tradesmen on the ground floors. This as you see is not at all like our well-made and well-arranged American life. It is very picturesque: but when that is said, all is said.

“Art” by Howard Pyle, 1908

In a letter dated December 22, 1908, architect Cass Gilbert wrote to Howard Pyle:

Your speech at the dinner was a great success. I heard many favorable and enthusiastic comments among the members of the Institute but not one criticism. You seem to have struck exactly the right note. As for myself, I concurred heartily in every word you said.

When I read this statement years ago, I thought, “What speech? What dinner?” Over time I was able to find out that Pyle spoke on December 17, 1908, at the banquet of the 42nd Annual Convention of the American Institute of Architects, at Washington, D.C.

A little more digging turned up the speech itself, printed in the AIA’s Proceedings, published the following year. But it turns out that when Pyle learned that the AIA was to put his words in print, he asked if he could rework them. He explained to Gilbert on December 23, 1908:

As you know, I had composed an entirely different speech from that which I delivered, that which I spoke being hastily arranged during the course of the dinner. I think it should be revised before being given to the public - the points sharpened, and the rhetoric put in better shape than is possible in an extempore address.

And so, the “official” version of Pyle’s speech differed from what he actually said. Unbeknownst to Pyle, however, (and perhaps even to the leaders of the AIA) a transcript of his address as delivered had been sent to The Western Architect and appeared in the January 1909 issue, reprinted below...

ART
by Howard Pyle

What is art? When we ask that question, the idea ordinarily intended is of a picture, of a statue, or a beautiful work of the architect; but art to me has a far greater, a far more vital significance than that. Art is the expression of a human thought in a living and a permanent form. As that thought is great and noble and grand within the man that conceives it, so in that degree is the work that he produces great and noble and grand. There is no school, there is no possible means whereby a great work of art can be created. The great work of art must emanate from the man - not from without, not by lines or rules or methods - it must emanate from the man. What is it that makes the great Saint Gaudens statue of Sherman so very great? It is not its technical skill; it is not any particular form or line or method of construction, but it is that that great man conceives within his mind the image of the hero of our war. Before that hero, advancing from the rock whereon he stands, the very ideal of American victory. It is American. It is not based upon any line or any rule or any method; but it is American, and therefore it is great, because it appeals from a great American soul to the soul of every other American who beholds it.

For three and thirty years I have served steadfastly at my chosen profession as an illustrator. In that time I have beheld the art of illustration, originating from small, obscure beginnings of a discredited handcraft, extend, expand and grow, until today it is almost, if not quite, the most dominant factor in existing American art. In that growth there is symbolized the truth that governs and must govern the product of all works of art. That truth is this: that any given work, to make its final and its most magnificent appeal, must be based upon the divine truth of uses. Unless a work of art meets a use, unless it fits to the demands, the aspirations and the ideals of the age in which it is created, it is a failure, and nothing can possibly make that art a success. [Applause.] The art of illustration is a success. Why? Primarily because the people of this country desire and love that which is beautiful. I have no patience with the talk, that emanates largely from the studios, of educating the American people to understand art. Educate the artist to understand the American people. [Applause.] If the artist understands the American people, there is no question of his work being a success. He does not have to depend upon commissions or ministries or any means to make his art a success, for it is a success in itself, because it emanates from a living soul and reaches to the other living souls who receive it. The art of illustration is a success for the simple reason that the American people love to see that which they read made beautiful with pictured image.

It is not far to seek; it is not a profound equation. All art is great just in the degree it is useful; and it is never great in any other degree. What was it that made the art of Phidias great? His art was created for a specific, definite purpose, as definite and as specific as the illustration today for our great magazines was made for a specific purpose. It was made that those who beheld it might be inspired with reverence for their gods and admiration for their heroes. [Applause.] That was the one reason why it was made, and as it touched the reverence and the respect, and the admiration of the Greeks of that day, so does it touch our reverence, our respect and our admiration today; - that when a living thought is embodied in a form that men can see, and touch and understand, it lives forever. What was it made the work of Michael Angelo, Leonardo, of Raphael, Durer, or Holbein great? Those works were great because each and every one was done for a definite and specific purpose. That purpose was to embody the human ideal of reverence for the divine motherhood; and as those artists poured their souls into those pictures that they made, just in that degree do those pictures. live today. They lived then; they live now, and they shall live forever - because they are human, not because they are technical works of art, but because they are human thoughts of excellent ideals cast into a living, visible work.

What is it makes American architecture the most successful art of the day? It is because the inspiration, the ideals, the beauty and graces that emanate in the mind of the architect is cast into the form of use. We talk of the American people not appreciating art. The crowds of American people pour into the public buildings which they themselves built, and who love them because they are beautiful in their eyes, not because they cost so many millions of money, but because they are beautiful. They say: “That is my capitol.” What is it makes the art of the architect successful today? It is because the American eyes can see and behold the visible form of American ideals. I cannot say that the art of painting, of which I am a representative, is so successful, for I do not think that that art is based fundamentally upon the higher uses of humanity, and until it is it cannot be successful.

I would touch again upon what I have heard several times tonight, and that is the education of the American people. I am a plain American. A very charming lady lately accused me of being a Philistine. Well, I am a Philistine. I like my beef and pudding, but I do like other things as well, and I am an American; and as an American I resent the talk that emanates from the studios of educating the American people. Let us instead of talking vaguely about this, recite the true facts, side by side; measure and compare those facts and see their proper significance. Upon the one side is a nation, we will say, of a hundred million people. It is safe to say that it is one of the greatest nations, one of the most enlightened nations in the world - a nation which is successful beyond the highest dreams of success; a nation with high ideals, exalted aspirations; a nation with a limitless future; upon the other side are a group of men (Shall I speak it of my own fellow craftsman?), narrow in their views - necessarily narrow in their views because they are confronted with certain technical rules which make them narrow in their views. As a rule, they are bigoted in their opinions. We all know that, for we are all artists. [Laughter and applause]. Doubting among ourselves as to what is the right thing, it is a great question among the hundreds of schools of art, each differing from the other in his opinion of what is the right thing; callous, not successful as a rule; taking the painters by a large majority, it is not a successful craft. Now, I ask you, with those two pictures placed side by side, which is the better equipped to educate the other? To me there is no doubt about it.

I welcome more than I can tell you the words that have come to me regarding the commission - a government commission or ministry of art - the effect of it - because I would see that commission operate along identically the lines that have made the art of illustration successful. The practical operation of that line is this: On the one side stands the artist equipped to produce beautiful works; upon the other side stands the public, desirous of receiving that which is beautiful. Between the two stand, as a commission (if we may so phrase it) the art editor and the editor in chief of the magazine. The art editor is supposed to be equipped to understand what is beautiful and correct in the art of picture making. The picture is brought to him; that he must pass upon primarily - the picture as being a work of art. Upon the other side of that commission there stands the editor in chief. The editor in chief is in touch with the whole mass of people. He must know that which will touch the heart of a million men. Therefore he demands that that picture shall be so constructed that it shall reach the heart, the understanding and the ideals of a million men. The result, you know as well as I, has been phenomenal. It is incredible to think that in ten and one-half decades the art of illustration should have risen to the height which it represents today. It has risen for no other cause than that it is founded and established upon the love and the desires of the people. That is its foundation and its full foundation; its final foundation.

I have used the simile before as to my ideal of art. I shall venture to use it again. To me the spirit of art is not a poor, weak and puling object, that must be supported by either political or plutocratic patronage. She is strong, erect, straight-limbed, full of the blood of humanity. Her brows are crowned with the stars of Heaven. The mountains are her throne, the earth her footstool, and the everlasting waters of the seas bathe her feet. I use that simile because those things - the sky, the earth, the waters beneath the earth - are the prime equations of humanity. Upon them all finer love and care for art are based. Therefore, that spirit of art that I would serve is crowned and enthroned and bathed by those fundamentals of human life.

I would welcome such a commission as that which has been suggested tonight, not that I think that that commission can create such a spirit of art, but I think that commission can part the curtains of the present, and that that spirit or art can come forth; and, when she is made manifest to the world, then the nations of the earth will come and lay the fruit of her prosperity beneath her shining feet.

Howard Pyle at Santa Croce, December 20, 1910

“The Gothic church of Santa Croce, begun in 1294…was completed in 1442, except the façade, which was added 1857-63. The interior, 128 yds. long, with its widely spaced pillars and open roof of its nave, produces an impressive effect, enhanced by numerous monuments of famous Italians and by Giotto’s venerable frescoes in the choir-chapels (Morning light best).” - Baedeker’s Northern Italy



One hundred years ago today, on December 20, 1910, Howard and Anne Poole Pyle toured the Basilica di Santa Croce, around the corner from their temporary lodgings on the Piazza Cavalleggieri in Florence. The next day, he wrote to Stanley Arthurs and gave his impressions of some of the things he saw there.

“Yesterday Mrs. Pyle and I went to an old church which was started to be built in the Twelfth Century [sic], and which was only completed in the Nineteenth.”



“There are a number of things in it which are good, or fairly good, and one or two things which are extremely beautiful. Among these is a tomb, or rather, memorial, made by Donatello - beautiful figures, soft greys and gilt.” [I assume Pyle meant Donatello’s “Annunciation” in gilded pietra serena, a grey Italian sandstone.]



“The walls are decorated with pictures of the Giotto school, 14th Century and are interesting as being a transcript of that life. The Italians have not preserved them very closely, but have spread stucco-work over them which has only just been removed.”



“I think the things which interested me most were the tombs let into the floor, and the figures of knights and ladies in the costumes of the 14th and 15th centuries worn by passing feet so that you cannot see any detail, but still leaving enough to see the general character.”

Edwin Markham’s Poem to Howard Pyle

Here is a poem by Edwin Markham:

Art
To Howard Pyle

At her light touch, behold! a voice proceeds
Out of all things to chide our sordid deeds;
A beauty breaks, a beauty ever strange,
The Changeless that is back of all the change.
Lightly it comes as when a rose would be
Takes feature yet remains a mystery.

This poem was born out of a request from Howard Pyle himself: after illustrating a deluxe edition of Markham’s The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (Doubleday & McClure Company, 1900), Pyle asked the poet to write him “an autograph verse” which he could insert into an “especial” copy of the book. It was “especial” - and, in fact, unique - in that Pyle glued the original illustrations onto sheets of Whatman’s hot-pressed paper onto which the publisher - in part compensation for the work Pyle had done - had printed the poems. Pyle then bound the book with wooden covers and decorated them with his daughter Phoebe’s pyrography set.

Ultimately, “Art” appeared in Markham’s subsequent collection, Lincoln & Other Poems, published in 1901 by McClure, Phillips & Company - and not by Doubleday, Page & Company, the successor to Doubleday & McClure, which had dissolved even before The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems was published (although the name still appeared on the title-age and spine). A chagrined Frank Nelson Doubleday, wrote on the flyleaf of an office copy of The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, "This edition was made to please the author and get his next book. It did neither."

And after trying to sell his unique copy of The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, Howard Pyle - in the words of Gertrude Brincklé - “lost interest in it and had it torn up.”

“The best engraver in the world is Mr. French”

The Yale Club bookplate by Howard Pyle, 1905 (engraved by Edwin Davis French)

“I have long admired your very admirable work, and have lost no opportunity of speaking of it to my friends, I am glad that my small efforts in that direction have brought about such results as the Bibliophile bookmark [sic], and the book-plate of the Yale Club.”

So said Howard Pyle in a letter to Edwin Davis French, written on December 11, 1905. Pyle had just completed a bookplate design for Edith Kermit Roosevelt - Teddy’s wife - and was hoping to get French to engrave it. He had said in a letter to her, “I think the best engraver in the world is Mr French. If he cuts this for you you will have a treasure that will always be a joy to you, for his work is as good as it is possible to be.” French, however, was unavailable for a few months, so Pyle got Sidney L. Smith to do the work instead.

I confess I don’t know what Pyle meant by “the Bibliophile bookmark.” Pyle’s drawings and paintings for the Bibliophile Society were photo-engraved, or etched by W. H. W. Bicknell. French did, however, engrave Pyle’s second bookplate for The Players Club in 1894.

The Players Club bookplate by Howard Pyle, 1894 (engraved by Edwin Davis French)


I think this is Pyle’s least successful bookplate design. I blame him for an awkward conception more than French for faulty engraving, although French seems to have blamed himself for its defects. It was, I understand, only his second such commission and Pyle’s “exquisitely delicate wash-drawing” - as French called it - “at the time seemed to me (and indeed I fear it proved to be) quite too formidable an undertaking for a plate-engraver of my limited experience.”

Perhaps the original art will turn up one of these days and we’ll be able to judge for ourselves.

Elihu Vedder Calls on Howard Pyle, December 10, 1910

On December 10, 1910, Elihu Vedder, the American artist and longtime resident of Italy, called on Howard Pyle at the Grand Continental Hotel in Rome.

But Pyle couldn’t see him: after dinner that day he had had an attack that spurred the family to fetch a doctor. His lingering illness, punctuated by sharp abdominal pains, pretty much confined him to his rooms: in fact, during his week-long stay in Rome, he ventured out only twice - and one of those times was so he could be x-rayed for kidney stones or gallstones.

Gertrude Brincklé and Phoebe Pyle went downstairs to meet Vedder in Pyle’s stead. Miss Brincklé wrote of the encounter the next day:

Elihu Vedder, the first personage whom we have seen abroad, came to call on Mr. Pyle last night, and Phoebe and I “received” him. He does not look at all like an artist, any more than Mr. Pyle does! He is a fat elderly man with a wondrous black worsted knitted vest, and a small brown skull-cap, and he talks a great deal about his book, apparently an autobiography or memoirs, of which both Phoebe and I were entirely ignorant.

Just a few weeks before Vedder’s visit, Houghton, Mifflin and Company had published his autobiography, The Digressions of V - in which Pyle gets only a passing mention (but waht else is new?).

Apparently, Pyle had known Vedder since the late 1870s. So far, though, I can put them in same place at the same time only once: on November 8, 1894, the two dined with Laurence and Eleanor Hutton at their house at 229 West 34th Street in Manhattan. A couple of days afterward Pyle spoke of “poor old Mr Vedder!” to Mrs. Hutton, “I suppose he enjoys his Italian life but isn’t it dreadful? Think of having to live in an atmosphere of art forever with no let up of nature and simplicity.”

Howard Pyle Arrives in Italy, December 7, 1910

The Sant’ Anna in Naples

In the rain and before dawn on December 7, 1910, the Sant’ Anna, carrying Howard Pyle, his family, and his secretary, Gertrude Brincklé, landed at Naples, Italy.

Pyle had already been unwell for several days and considered staying over in the port city, but, according to Miss Brincklé, he woke that morning “with light of determination in his eye” and decided to continue on to Florence as planned.

Fortunately, they met a Wilmington acquaintance, a Mr. Gawthrop, whose friend, Mr. Montefredini, helped get them through customs and onto a northbound train. After dark that same day, they arrived in Rome. But Pyle was unable to travel any further, so they found rooms at the Grand Continental Hotel, just opposite the Stazione di Termini.

The Red Cross Christmas Stamp, 1908

Did you know that Howard Pyle - at the request of his friend and fellow Wilmingtonian, Emily Perkins Bissell - designed the first nationally distributed Christmas seal? (The first seal, of 1907, was designed by Miss Bissell herself and was more of a Delaware-centric affair.) The Report of the Seventh International Tuberculosis Conference, Philadelphia, 24th-26th of September 1908 (Berlin-Charlottenburg, Internationale Vereinigung gegen die Tuberkulose, 1909) stated:

The Christmas Stamp in red and green, which this year has been kindly designed by the artist, Mr. Howard Pyle, will be sold for the benefit of the Red Cross anti-tuberculosis work. The little stamps do not carry mail, but with the good wishes that they bear to the friend on whose letter or gift you may place them, they will carry also some of the Christmas cheer to many sorrying homes, where the terrible scourge of tuberculosis now holds its sway.

These so-called “bullets in the fight against tuberculosis” cost a penny a piece and by mid-November 1908, seven million copies of Pyle’s stamp had already been ordered.

For some more historical background, take a look at this from Harper’s Weekly for December 5, 1908:

The Red Cross Christmas Stamp

The Christmas stamp which the American Red Cross is selling this year as part of its active campaign against tuberculosis, was invented in Denmark, where, in 1904, the Danish government issued a similar stamp with the King's head and the word “yule” on it, not good for postage, but to stick on Christmas letters, postal cards, and packages.

The Danish stamp was issued to raise funds to build a tuberculosis hospital for children. Jacob Riis wrote a piece about it [see The Outlook for July 6, 1907] and tried to get a similar stamp issued by our government. That proved impracticable, but last year the Delaware Red Cross issued a Christmas stamp and sold about 400,000 of them. That considerable success led the National Red Cross to make a wholesale experiment this year. Howard Pyle designed a stamp, and it is to see how many can be sold between Thanksgiving and New-year's. The purpose is as much to advertise the work against consumption, and educate and interest the public in it, as to raise funds. The stamps will be supplied to buyers and sellers from the Red Cross headquarters in each State, but the distribution will be well attended to, and the Christmas stamp is likely to be a very conspicuous feature of the coming holidays.