Imagination vs. Imitation

Howard Pyle’s “We started to run back to the raft for our lives” from “Sindbad on Burrator” by A. T. Quiller Couch in Scribner's Magazine for August 1902. See the original oil at the Delaware Art Museum.

“...I think you may easily see that in the making of a successful picture, the artist must compose and arrange his figures and effects altogether from his imagination, and that there is very little opportunity in the making of such a picture for him to copy exactly the position of a model placed before him in the lights and shadows which the studios afford. Nor is it likely that he can find any background to copy accurately and exactly into such an imaginative picture.

“For example: suppose an artist were called upon to paint a picture of a man running away from his enemies along the shores of a sea; with a gray sky overhead, and a strong wind blowing over the landscape. You see, he could not pose a model in the required position, for not only could no model hold such a position as that of a man running, with a center of gravity projected far beyond the point of impact; but even if the model were suspended in the air in such a position, yet he would not convey the idea of running. Apart from this it would be very difficult to find exactly the seascape to fit the picture, and exactly the landscape. For all this, the man must draw, not upon the facts of nature, but upon his imagination.

“If I have expressed myself at all clearly, you will see that what a man needs to paint an imaginative picture of such a sort, is not the power of imitation, but the knowledge to draw a figure from imagination.…”

Howard Pyle to William Merchant Richardson French (Director of the Art Institute of Chicago), June 22, 1905

“The Doll Has Goitre” and Other Criticisms of Howard Pyle

Figure 1. “Her whisper was so soft he only guessed the words“ from "The Stairway of Honor" by Maud Stepney Rawson in Harper's Monthly Magazine for January 1904

One might think that Howard Pyle was universally lauded during his lifetime. But he had his critics. John K. Hoyt was one, and his stinging - yet amusing - long letter to The New York Times was printed on October 22, 1904. I've reprinted it in full, below, and - in case you don’t have scattered issues of Harper’s Monthly Magazine for 1904 at your elbow - I’ve inserted the illustrations to which Hoyt refers.


Mr. Pyle’s Illustrations

New York Times Book Review:

I wonder if the great periodicals of the day have art censors on their staffs. This thought occurs on seeing so much poor work in many of their illustrations. Take Harper's Monthly Magazine, for example. For some time it has been publishing illustrations in color by Mr. Howard Pyle. Mr. Pyle’s reputation stands high, and deservedly so. He can do good work, and he should keep his contributions up to the standard for excellence; but some of his drawings are distinctly bad. Not only that, but they are irrelevant to the story he attempts to illustrate. For instance, take the short story in the January number entitled "The Stairway of Honor." The hero, an artist, is a gentleman, and endowed with a keen sense of honor, while the heroine is a lady of high degree; in short a Duchess, and is very beautiful. Now turn to the frontispiece [Figure 1] - and behold! a man and woman with the faces of peasants, while that of the woman is weak and ugly, the very reverse of the woman described in the story. Both are deformed. Compare the man’s short arm and shriveled hand with his abnormal breadth of shoulder. Look at the woman's arms - both too short - and her misshapen body and her general air of awkwardness. The color in this picture is good, the drawing bad.

Figure 2. “He found Mélite alone” from “The Story of Adhelmar” by James Branch Cabell in Harper's Monthly Magazine for April 1904

In the April number the place of honor - the frontispiece [Figure 2] - is again assigned to Mr. Pyle. Here we have a wooden image sitting, garbed in the habiliments of a woman, with a heavy mat of jute, in lieu of hair, falling from her head to her waist. The figure is devoid of any lines indicative of feminine grace; it might be the figure of a boy - a wooden boy. The arms in those sleeves are not made of flesh and bones and muscle, but of good solid oak. The expression of the face betokens intense, sullen stupidity. A knight clad in armor stands in the doorway, leaning against the jamb for support, evidently bereft of strength - as well he may be - at the ugliness of the thing.

Figure 3. “He sang for her as they sat in the gardens” from “The Story of Adhelmar” by James Branch Cabell in Harper's Monthly Magazine for April 1904

Another illustration in this number, facing Page 706 [Figure 3], represents a woman with a faded, washed-out face; a silly, simpering face; and whose right side has been developed at the expense of the left. And then, while gazing, one is stricken with deep compassion, as he perceives that this poor creature has curvature of the spine, and he wonders how, under the circumstances, she can even simper. In this figure also there are no lines to indicate the sex. These two compositions are enough to drive the luckless author of “The Story of Adhelmar” frantic. And if he has survived the sight of them, he is doubtless now going about in quest of the artist and thirsting for his gore.

When it comes to art let, us be aesthetic or nothing. Let us change the titles of these two compositions and, after the manner of Whistler, call the first "A Nightmare in Blue," and the other "A Simper in White."

Figure 4. “Catherine de Vaucelles, in her garden” from “In Necessity’s Mortar” by James Branch Cabell in Harper's Monthly Magazine for October 1904

Turn to the frontispiece in the October number [Figure 4]. Here we have the picture of a Japanese doll, and - was ever such a thing heard of? - the doll has goitre. Not as yet a fully developed case; but it’s there, and is quite pronounced. The face is a blank wall; but there - dolls’ faces generally are devoid of expression. Some of the material left over from constructing the gown has been utilised in building a mouth. Was the moon an afterthought? It would seem so, for it is not night. Apple blossoms don't look like that by moonlight; neither does a red dress. At any rate, putting the moon there was a lucky hit - we might almost say an inspiration - for it draws the eye away from the doll-faced woman.

Figure 5. "Villon - The singer Fate fashioned to her liking" from “In Necessity’s Mortar” by James Branch Cabell in Harper's Monthly Magazine for October 1904

Figure 6. "The King himself hauled me out of gaol" from “In Necessity’s Mortar” by James Branch Cabell in Harper's Monthly Magazine for October 1904

Now turn to the pictures facing Pages 706 [Figure 5] and 708 [Figure 6] in this number. What a difference! Here we have good work, work that any artist might well be proud of. No uncertain touches here, no feeble lines; but good, strong drawing, and the colors laid on with the brush of a master. Mr. Pyle's backgrounds are almost always rich in color, harmonious, and effective.

I wonder why his men are so well drawn, while his women generally are not. Evidently he does not draw women from the model. Turn again to the illustration facing Page 706 in the April number [Figure 5]; compare the drawing in the figure of the man with that in the figure of the woman. Was there ever such incongruity? That of the man shows that it was drawn by an artist of the twentieth century who understands his work, while that of the woman might have been done at the time in which the story is laid, in the fourteenth century, or, rather, in justice to the artists of that time, let us say, during the paleolithic age.

Figure 7. "The drawing of the sword" from “The Sword of Ahab” by James Edmund Dunning in Harper's Monthly Magazine for August 1904

I said, I wonder why his men are drawn so well. They are not always. Turn, for instance, to the picture facing Page 335 in the August number [Figure 7]. The drawing in the figure of the man is bad. The lines are feeble, uncertain. His right shoulder is dislocated, caused doubtless - and it serves him right - by his efforts to draw the sword in that awkward and unheard-of fashion. The writer of the story fails to mention this accident; neither does he account for the presence in the picture of what is evidently an effigy from some modern wayside shrine in Italy. This only goes to show that an artist should exercise the utmost care in selecting an author to write up his pictures.

I do not claim that all women are beautiful, or that all of them have perfect figures; and if an artist chooses to portray them as ugly and deformed, he is clearly within his rights; but I maintain that when an artist is assigned to illustrating a story, he should place himself en rapport, if possible, with the author; should try to enter into his feelings, see with his eyes, depict the characters as they are described. And above all things, if the heroine is beautiful, let him make her beautiful - if he can.

JOHN K. HOYT.
Candler, North Carolina


Me (Ian Schoenherr) again:

Mr. Hoyt makes some good points: Pyle’s women, with a few exceptions, truly are the “weaker sex” - idealized, anemic, and bland. And, as the years went on, while Pyle’s pictures grew more vibrant in color, sometimes his figures lacked good construction and his compositions were oversimplified.

For the record, “the luckless author,” James Branch Cabell, thought Pyle’s illustrations for “The Story of Adhelmar“ were “magnificent.” But I never much liked “He found Mélite alone” [Figure 2] and “He sang for her as they sat in the gardens” [Figure 3] - or the third illustration, not shown. Too, the figures in "The drawing of the sword" from “The Sword of Ahab” leave something to be desired - although the setting, costumes, and color are pretty interesting.

I do like “Her whisper was so soft he only guessed the words“ [Figure 1] for its weird lighting, color, and atmosphere. The “faces of peasants” don’t bother me, but then again I’m descended from such “ugly” people.

Who knows if Pyle ever took note of Hoyt’s letter. He wrote later about “the futility of following such memoranda” and said, “Where they intend to praise they always miss the point, and where they intend to dispraise they leave, even though you know the dispraise does not amount to anything, a feeling of unpleasantness.”

Life Lessons from Howard Pyle

From “The Divinity of Labor,” a commencement address delivered by Howard Pyle to the graduates of Delaware College on June 16, 1897:

When you have chosen your profession and have entered fairly into the work of your life, that which is first necessary to achieve success is application.

By application is not meant mere dumb and stubborn laboriousness of duty; by application is meant the perfect conjunction or application of your mind to the subject in hand. If you are a farmer, do not pause at the end of the furrough to speculate upon the destiny of mankind; if you are a student, do not, whilst your eyes are marching across the page, allow your brain to occupy itself with other things; if you are an experimenter or an inventor, do not pause in the midst of your labors to formulate some new experiment or some other invention aside from that upon which you are at work; if you are an author, or an artist, do not permit your mind to ramble through the shady depths and the breezy stretches whilst your canvas or your paper lies empty before you. Bend every faculty of your mind on the work which lies beneath your hand. Concentration is a habit - it is not a gift, and I do assure you as a man who has known many men and who has observed many men at their work - I do assure you that just in the degree that a man concentrates his mind upon the work that lies immediately before him, in exactly that degree does he achieve success in the labor of his life.

As necessary, however, as is the concentration of the mind, it is not more necessary to success than it is to develop the opportunities that lie immediately at hand.

There are few temptations greater than the temptation that possesses a man to gaze into some impossible to-morrow, beholding in it an opportunity that does not exist to-day.

The opportunities that lie immediately at hand appear to be very small and very petty; and those that are remote appear to be very great and very pregnant of possibilities. Alas! how many men are there who, gazing into that seductive future, stumble over the things of the present and so fall prostrate in the dust!

He who succeeds, is he who seizes the opportunity that lies within his grasp and developes that opportunity to its uttermost. No one can ever achieve a great success unless he performs well the small things of life. To achieve success, everything, however insignificant, should be done to the fulness of your powers.

Master Pyle Goes to Washington

The United States Treasury Department at Washington, from a photograph by Alexander Gardner (1866)

“You aught to see the treasury bilding it’s steps are the queerest things I ever saw there is not any thing to hold them up yet hundreds of people walk on them ever day...

“Dr* says thers is more 3700 clearks and not more than 3 or 4 to each room The building takes up a hole squair much longer than any of ours...”

Howard Pyle, 13, to his father, William Pyle, June 16, 1866

* Dr. William Elder (1806-1885), physician, lecturer, political economist, biographer of Elisha Kent Kane, etc., etc., and longtime friend of the Pyle family.

To the Villa Torricella, June 14, 1911

Villa Torricella, Summer 1911 (Eleanor and Phoebe Pyle in the distance)

One hundred years ago today - June 14, 1911 - Howard Pyle and his family took up a three months’ residence at the Villa Torricella in San Domenico, just north of Florence. He later described the entrance to the property - which his son Howard photographed - in a letter to Mrs. Charles Copeland:

You approach this little villa up a rising lane from the road. The road itself is framed on either side by high stone walls, over which the verdure peeps, and it is so narrow that it would be impossible for two teams to pass one another. An iron gate shuts us from this road, and as the gates are opened you see before you the stony rise of a path, and overhead an arbor of vines and flowers. When we were here in the spring it was full of wistaria, and the air was loaded with their fragrance. Now there are few, if any, flowers, but only the leaves and the vines twined overhead.

Howard Pyle Quits Drexel Institute

I’ve read in more than one place that, once Howard Pyle decided to establish his own school, he resigned from the Drexel Institute (in a February 14, 1900, letter) and left immediately.

That isn’t what happened. For one thing, Pyle’s sense of duty would have kept him on until his contract ran out at the end of the spring semester - or at least until a replacement was found. Besides that, though, this item appeared in The New York Evening Post of Saturday, June 16, 1900:

Last week on Wednesday evening the pupils of Howard Pyle gave him a farewell reception at Drexel Institute, Philadelphia. It was an occasion of welcoming the coming as well as speeding the parting guest, for B. West Clinedinst, the instructor who is to succeed Mr. Pyle, was also present. Speeches were made by both of the men, Mr. Pyle was visibly affected by his leave-taking.

Sahibs, Sikhs, Pathans, Boers, Kipling...and Pyle?

Howard Pyle’s “Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib” illustrated Rudyard Kipling’s short story, “A Sahib’s War,” in Collier’s Weekly for December 7, 1901.

The setting is South Africa during the Second Boer War (which was then in progress): “a tall young man deprived of understanding” is about to be hanged from a tree by two turbaned soldiers: Umr Singh, a Sikh, in the center, and Sikander Khan, a Pathan, on the right. But their efforts are thwarted by the ghost of a beloved British cavalry officer, Captain Corbyn (“Kurban Sahib”), recently killed in an ambush, who drifts toward them, saying, “No. It is a Sahib’s War.” A Boer woman is cowering on the ground with upraised “paroxysmal hands” (Singh and Khan sport them, too - common Pylean appendages).

The original for this has yet to turn up, so while I’m confident Pyle painted it in oil, I don’t know if it’s black and white, part color, or full color, or how large it is. The 9 x 10" halftone plate was retouched by an engraver, but it’s a pretty awful reproduction. Even so, its otherworldly weirdness and strength come through.

Lurid Pyle

This doesn’t look 113 years old, but it’s from Howard Pyle’s “A True History of the Devil at New Hope” in Harper’s Weekly for December 18, 1897. It served as a headpiece for the chapter titled “How the Devil was cast out of the Meeting-House” and the reproduction measures 6 x 3.3". A wonderful thing: flat, bright, bold, and creepy.

“The Robin’s Vesper”

The June 7, 1879, issue of Harper’s Weekly featured this full-page (12 x 8.9") illustrated poem titled “The Robin’s Vesper” by Howard Pyle. According to his younger sister, Katharine, this was one of the first things Pyle did after relocating from New York to Wilmington.

For the longest time I was under the impression that Pyle had left New York toward the end of 1879, but Katharine recalled that her brother’s “A Milkmaid’s Song” - published in Harper’s Weekly for July 19, 1879 - was also done shortly after his return to his hometown. Granted, Katharine’s not the most reliable witness, but fortunately we have at least two newspaper items that back her up: on May 12, 1879, the New York Herald lamented, “Howard Pyle has gone to Wilmington, Del., we regret to hear, to stay.” And the Art Interchange for May 28, 1879, noted, “Howard Pyle has left New York for good and is now living in Wilmington, Del.”

In the late 1870s through the early ’80s, Pyle made a couple of genre pictures such as this, akin to and almost contemporaneous with some of Winslow Homer’s studies, like Autumn and Peach Blossoms.

Pyle did the hand-lettering himself, too, and in case you find yourself tripping over his long s’s, here’s a transcription:

The Robin’s Vesper
by Howard Pyle

When shadows brood upon the hill,
And daylight draweth to a close;
When frogs pipe by the lowland rill,
Within the valley’s dim repose;
Then the small bird seeks her nest,
Swinging on the blossoming spray;
Only Robin doth not rest,
Singing to the dying day.
Sweet Robin!
Merry Robin!
So I’d have my Soul to be,
Singing clear
Thro’ the near
Shadow of Eternity.

Howard Pyle vs. N. C. Wyeth

Behold, two great versions - two great visions - of the same scene from Kidnapped:

“I saw him pass his sword through the mate’s body” by Howard Pyle (1895)

“I saw him pass his sword through the mate’s body” by Howard Pyle, painted in black and white oil, about 11 x 16" on canvas board for The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895). The original is at the Delaware Art Museum. The reproduction in the book (from which the above was scanned) is only 3 x 4.3" and the sized paper has rippled and yellowed over time.

“The Siege of the Round-House” by N. C. Wyeth (1913)

“The Siege of the Round-House” by N. C. Wyeth, painted in full-color oil on canvas, about 32 x 40" for Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913). The Brandywine River Museum has the original which is considerably less yellow than this plate (5 1/4 x 6 5/8") from an early edition of the book.

The more I look at Pyle’s paintings the more I feel that there is a certain “quietness” (I wouldn’t say “coolness”) in even his most action-packed scenes. They uncannily capture those slow-motion, hushed moments of highest tension. As I’ve said before (somewhere around here), one of the things I love about Pyle is that his best pictures - and his best writings - activate my other senses as I look or read: I feel the sun’s hot glare; I smell the grass or the smoke; I hear the distant birds or lapping waves. It’s subtle, yet it’s a big part of what gives his work its resonance and power. And when I look at this picture I hear the thin, almost imperceptible blade piercing the mate’s clothing as it emerges from his back.

Pyle once said something to the effect of, “If you hear a man say, ‘I will kill you!’ in wild passionate tones you will not believe that he means it - but if he should say it quietly and deliberately with the passion kept behind you will know that life is endangered.”

Of course, N. C. Wyeth rarely kept the passion behind. In this as in so many of his pictures (especially his earlier ones) his barbaric yawp is loud and clear - not to mention the cacophony of clattering swords, shouts, and stamping feet. His scene is more overtly melodramatic and theatrical than Pyle’s: it’s even illuminated as if by footlights. But while Wyeth’s actors are hammier, his colors brighter, and his composition simpler, somehow he pulls it off - as he so often did. His over-the-top approach was as effective as it was different from his teacher’s “quiet and deliberate” path.

“I think myself they are among the best”

“Blackbeard's last fight” by Howard Pyle (1894)

Finally, some pirates.

On June 4, 1894, Howard Pyle sent the last two illustrations for Jack Ballister’s Fortunes to William Fayal Clarke, his editor at St. Nicholas Magazine. His pirate novel for children was then running in installments and these two pictures wouldn’t appear until the issues of July and September 1895. Both were painted in black and white oil on academy board (probably made by Devoe & Co.) about 10 x 15 or 16".

Pyle seems to have begun these after May 16, 1894, the day he sent in the three preceding pictures - or maybe even after the 17th, when he and Clarke discussed the final four subjects over lunch in New York - or maybe - and perhaps more likely - after May 25, when he replied to a letter from Clarke, who had a few concerns about them.

“I hope you will like these drawings,” Pyle wrote to Clarke on June 4. “I think myself they are among the best, especially the fight, in which I have studiously thrown Blackbeard somewhat in the background.”

And that’s the curious thing about the painting: we see comparatively little of Blackbeard, whose braided-bearded face, with a dagger clutched between his teeth, is dead center, yet partially obscured by the cuff of the dark-jacketed Lieutenant Robert Maynard. Here is Pyle’s long description of the chaotic scene:

Lieutenant Maynard, as he called out the order, ran forward through the smoke, snatching one of his pistols out of his pocket and the cutlass out of its sheath as he did so. Behind him, the men were coming, swarming up from below. There was a sudden stunning report of a pistol, and then another and another, almost together. There was a groan and the fall of a heavy body, and then a figure came jumping over the rail, with two or three more directly following. The lieutenant was in the midst of the gunpowder smoke, when suddenly Blackbeard was before him. The pirate captain had stripped himself naked to the waist. His shaggy black hair was falling over his eyes, and he looked like a demon fresh from the pit, with his frantic face. Almost with the blindness of instinct, the lieutenant thrust out his pistol, firing it as he did so. The pirate staggered back: He was down - no; he was up again. He had a pistol in each hand; but there was a stream of blood running down his naked ribs. Suddenly, the mouth of a pistol was pointing straight at the lieutenant's head. He ducked instinctively, striking upward with his cutlass as he did so. There was a stunning, deafening report almost in his ear. He struck again blindly with his cutlass. He saw the flash of a sword and flung up his guard almost instinctively, meeting the crash of the descending blade. Somebody shot from behind him, and at the same moment he saw someone else strike the pirate. Blackbeard staggered again, and this time there was a great gash upon his neck. Then one of Maynard's own men tumbled headlong upon him. He fell with the man, but almost instantly he had scrambled to his feet again, and as he did so he saw that the pirate sloop had drifted a little away from them, and that their grappling-iron had evidently parted. His hand was smarting as though struck with the lash of a whip. He looked around him; the pirate captain was nowhere to be seen - yes, there he was, lying by the rail. He raised himself upon his elbow, and the lieutenant saw that he was trying to point a pistol at him, with an arm that wavered and swayed blindly, the pistol nearly falling from his fingers. Suddenly, his other elbow gave way, and he fell down upon his face. He tried to raise himself - he fell down again. There was a report and a cloud of smoke, and when it cleared away Blackbeard had staggered up again. He was a terrible figure - his head nodding down upon his breast. Somebody shot again, and then the swaying figure toppled and fell. It lay still for a moment - then rolled over - then lay still again.

I should note that the above passage comes from the book, not the magazine, and differs a fair amount since Pyle extensively revised the text somewhat over a year later. The picture, too, was retitled, “The Combatants cut and slashed with savage Fury,” for the book version. Go and see the luminous original at the Delaware Art Museum.

“‘Then I will come,’ said he” by Howard Pyle (1894)

The second picture shows Jack Ballister and Miss Eleanor Parker “standing in the full moonlight, which will make an effective contrast to the illustration preceding it, having, as it will, a background setting of the night and the starry sky.” Or so Pyle described it in his letter of May 25, 1894. He went on:

This picture will not necessarily be especially dark, though of course it will not be as brilliant as the full sunlight. Nevertheless, I should recommend it as a fitting subject. It accents the peaceful conclusion of a rather active story, especially as it will directly follow, both in the magazine and the book form, the fight between Blackbeard and the King’s men.

It seems to me that it would hardly be in keeping with the story to culminate the illustrations with action instead of repose. However, of course I will make whatever illustrations you think fitting.

But Clarke conceded, and Pyle painted with breakneck speed. His Wilmington neighbor, Caroline Tatnall Bush - called “Carrie” - who later married Christopher L. Ward, posed for Eleanor, who, in turn, provided the name for Pyle’s second daughter, born February 10 that same year.

More on John Henderson Betts

Last year I posted something about John Henderson Betts, who studied with Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute and at Chadd’s Ford, but who met an untimely and gruesome end shortly before his 25th birthday. Since then, a few of his paintings have come to light...

Betts conveniently dated this one November 9 (or 4), 1897, and he most likely made it in Pyle’s Life Class Studying from the Draped and Costumed Model (a.k.a. “Draped Model Class” or “Class in Draped Model” and so on) since it contains no “setting” per se. As Pyle said in the Drexel course catalogue:

In this class, departing essentially from the ordinary work of academic schools in studying from the living figure, the model is costumed and posed in some suggestive action, and the student is instructed to draw the figure that it may be introduced into a picture.

Or, as he put it another (yet, perhaps still convoluted) way:

The purpose here is to instruct the student in the necessary technical methods to be used in representing the draped human figure. The processes required to properly draw the draped figure are so different from those demanded in the rendition of other kinds of academic work that it has been found necessary to require proficiency in this before advancing the student to the final branch of instruction.

Although Pyle did not pick Betts’ study for the second annual School of Illustration show in the spring of 1898, another student, Cornelia Greenough, exhibited “The Cavalier, 1650,” which may have come from the same pose. (Betts' “Colonial Figure, 1740” was shown, however, as well as his “Peace and War,” “Study of a Head - Emperor,” and “The Highwayman.”)

And now here’s something representative of “the final branch of instruction” - i.e. the Illustration Class:

 

Although this one is not titled, I would call it “The Priest and the Piper.” Why? Because two other Pyle students, Sarah S. Stilwell and Bertha Corson Day, exhibited pictures of that name in the May 1899 student show at Drexel and Pyle (who I’m sure wrote the text of the catalogue) said:

The subject was painted as class work with the purpose of having one of the pictures used in Harper’s Weekly [sic] Hallowe’-en number. Of all the class work, the best two examples were chosen. The above two were submitted to Harper’s Weekly, and the drawing by Miss Stilwell was selected as being the most available for publication.

Now, compare Betts’ with Stilwell’s picture, which was published in Harper's Bazar (not Harper's Weekly) for November 5, 1898. There it’s called “A Vision on All-Hallows Eve” and it illustrates a playlet by Pyle himself, titled “The Priest and the Piper: A Halloween Fantasy”...

“A Vision on All-Hallows Eve” by Sarah S. Stilwell (1898)

And while we’re on the topic, the Brandywine River Museum has a painting by Caroline Louise Gussmann, which may have been born out of the same knock-kneed piper pose. (In fact, there may well be a score of similar images out there - and the same goes for Betts’ cavalier picture.)

“Tipsy Piper” by Caroline Louise Gussmann

This next and last one is dated November 1898, which may have been after Betts left Drexel. But the Pyle influence is still very much in evidence - and since one of Betts’ compositions was exhibited in the May 1899 show, perhaps he studied with Pyle for a while after the summer session of 1898. This looks less like a class piece than a bona fide illustration, though I have yet to identify if, when, or where it was published.

And in case you’re inclined to learn more about these or see several other works by Betts, please look here.

Would that I could snag them myself!

“I am growing so old now...”

Howard Pyle’s summer home in 1911: Villa Torricella, San Domenico, Florence, Italy

“This is now the first of June, and two weeks hence we shall be out in the country, and I long to get there and to enjoy the luxury of an American furnished house with Italian belongings, and the fine large secluded studio that I shall have. I hope I shall have work to do, but I am pretty far away for that, and I find it difficult to keep myself busy. On the whole it is a very good thing, for it stimulates my imagination, and braces me up to the old effort of making what I do tell as much as possible. But I am growing so old now that I find the strain of imagination is a little depressing to me, and I must keep up my great expenses or else rapidly fall behind.”

Howard Pyle to Stanley Arthurs, June 1, 1911

Remember the Johnstown Flood?

In 1866, 13-year-old Howard Pyle, then visiting Washington, D.C., wrote to his father, “Please tell me in thy letter wether I can stay [in] Baltimore and if I can ask mother what number streat uncle Davis Hoops lives.”

Davis Haines Hoopes (1803-1873) was married to Pyle’s mother’s sister, Mary West Painter (1808-1885), who lived with the Pyle family in Wilmington for several years before her death.

And on this date in 1889, Davis and Mary’s grandson (thus Pyle’s first cousin once removed), Walter Ernest Hoopes (who was then Secretary of the Johnson Steel Street Rail Company), as well as Walter’s wife, Maria, and their two sons, Ernest and Allen, were “swept away and perished” in the Johnstown Flood.

Their deaths resulted in a curious legal proceeding detailed here and elsewhere.

Decoration Day

“In Memoriam” by Miss Sophie B. Steel

Last year on St. Valentine’s Day I posted an article about the holiday written by Howard Pyle and illustrated by Anne Abercrombie Mhoon. As I mentioned in that post, Pyle often had his Drexel Institute students make compositions with seasonal themes and then submit the results to art editors of various periodicals. The ones deemed best would be worked up for publication. Sometimes these pictures required no words to explain them and other times text would be provided - very occasionally by Pyle himself. And so, on this Memorial Day, here is Pyle’s “Decoration Day” from Harper’s Bazar of May 28, 1898. About the same time that this came out, the picture illustrating it - “In Memoriam” by Sophie Bertha Steel - was shown with the title “Decoration Day in the South” at the Second Exhibition of the School of Illustration at the Drexel Institute. Steel, born in 1870 in Pennsylvania, was awarded a scholarship to Pyle’s first summer school at Chadd’s Ford, and later illustrated Historic Dress in America, 1607-1870 by Elisabeth McClellan and taught illustration at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia. For many years she lived in Surrey, England.


Decoration Day
by Howard Pyle

For several years after the close of the civil war, and before “Decoration day” had been dedicated to the memory of the army of silent thousands who had given their lives that the Union might live - for several years before the observance of Memorial day had become a custom in the North - some such commemorative period had been observed in the South, in so far that it had become the custom upon certain appointed times for the women of that section - the mothers, the wives, the children of the Southern dead - to strew the graves of their fallen soldiers with flowers, typical of those sacred memories that still surrounded the lost and loved ones who had fallen for the Lost Cause.

At that time the outward signs of that flaming and bitter strife were still fresh and new. The bosom of nature, ploughed by the iron of war, had not yet healed. Everywhere were smoke blackened and shattered shells, each, one time, the patriarchal mansion of some great slave-holding planter; woods and glades were thinned out by the storm of shot and shell that had torn through them with iron hail; in one place or another long rows - rank upon rank - of shallow mounds stretched up hill, along the level, through the woodlands, battalions of graves hardly yet covered with the thin young grass. Upon a dozen battle-fields were great cemeteries, each consecrated with its baptism of blood, and there North and South lay in stillness, soldiers stretched side by side, in a fraternity never to be broken, because the Angel Israfeel himself had set his seal of silence upon it all.

It was to these battle cemeteries, greater or lesser, that the women of the neighboring country brought their offering of flowers. There is something very full of pathos in the thought of those poor Southern women who had suffered so much and who had endured to such a bitter end - of those patient women of grief bringing their harmless offerings of flowers to these stern and furrowed fields of death, there to lay the fading things upon the bosom of each mound. For the North, it is said, was remembered at those times as well as the South. One cannot but hope this may be true, for it is beautiful to think of one woman of sorrows in the South reaching out an unseen hand to some other and unknown woman of sorrows in the faraway North.

It seems to me that this is distinctly the thought that Miss Steel has caught in her picture of the Southern woman standing with patient, introspective grief over the one precious flower-strewn grave at her feet - the thought of the sisterhood of woman’s suffering.

Thus it was that the observance of Memorial day began. But it was not until 1868 that General John A. Logan - then commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic - issued orders that on the 30th of May of that year all posts, East and West, should decorate the graves of their comrades in arms who had baptized the renewed Union with their own hearts’ blood.

Still later the Legislatures of the different States took up the matter, and so at the present time it has grown to be both a national and a legal holiday in almost all the States and Territories of the Union.

This year is the thirtieth anniversary of the nation’s commemoration of its sacred dead.

“In the Prison”

Would you like to own Howard Pyle’s “In the Prison” from Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker by S. Weir Mitchell? Now’s your chance.

The original 18 x 25" oil in “part color” is coming up for auction at Freeman’s in Philadelphia on June 19, 2011. It might need a good cleaning, unless Pyle’s pigments have irreversibly darkened over the last 114 years.

This is how it looked when it was first published in The Century Magazine for May 1897. The 5.2 x 7.3" plate (in halftone, but heavily worked over by a human engraver) is a much different animal:

A Charming Talk with Alpheus Sherwin Cody

The following tidbit comes from the article “Artist-Authors” by Alpheus Sherwin Cody in the May 26, 1894, issue of The Outlook:

Howard Pyle says that he thinks every illustrator should be also a writer, though not every writer can be his own illustrator, for the reason that drawing requires a technical skill which is not by any means so easy to acquire as the more natural art of writing. Mr. Pyle has succeeded very distinctly as a writer as well as an artist, and we find Smedley writing articles, and Reinhart and Remington, not to mention Mary Hallock Foote, who is more of an author than an artist, she maintains.

I had a charming talk with Mr. Pyle recently, regarding the connection between illustration and writing fiction, during which he made the following interesting explanation:

“My own writing has come as naturally with my drawing as it possibly could. In writing, one gets a vague impression of a face. It is an impression, not a vivid delineation. For instance, one cannot so easily call to memory the features of an intimate friend as those of one with whom he is not so well acquainted. It is as if the features of the flesh dissolve into the soul that gives them life. One grows to know the soul better than the face. So it is with the face in a story. In a story you get the soul. The pencil gives a body to the words of the author, for as he clothes them they must henceforth walk in the world. That is why I say the art of writing and delineation ought to go hand in hand.”

The Press-Gang in New York

Not all of Howard Pyle’s illustrations just “fell off his brush” - I mean, where his concept was vivid enough that he could go straight from hurried thumbnail sketch (or 50, according to legend) to final art. Sometimes he had to do a little more homework. And although there are some relatively careful preliminary studies from his more mature period - like this one from 1902 - he probably made many more of them in his earlier years, when he was less sure of himself. Like this one, which comes from the Brandywine River Museum:

And this one, which was bound into a volume of Pyle’s collected illustrations:

Pyle made both in preparation of his illustration “The Press-Gang in New York” for “Old New York Coffee-Houses” by John Austin Stevens. Here it is as engraved by Smithwick and French, from Harper's New Monthly Magazine for March 1882:

Pyle had completed (and conveniently dated) the work over two years earlier, in December 1879. He was 26, then, living with his parents and siblings at 714 West Street in Wilmington, Delaware, and working in a studio rigged out on the top floor of the family house. He probably worked on this picture there and may have gotten his brothers, Cliff (22) and Walter (20), to pose for him (the second study suggests that he only had one model posing at a time, however).

Fortunately, Pyle’s original black and white gouache also survives in the Mabel Brady Garvan Collection at Yale University, where it’s called “At the Sign of the Griffin.”

That might be their title or one Pyle scribbled on the back, but in December 1880 the painting was exhibited as “The Press Gang” in the Salmagundi Sketch Club Black and White Exhibition at the Academy of Design in New York. The sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, by the way, wrote a letter complimenting Pyle on his work there. “I am happy that you found anything to give you satisfaction in my drawings [sic] in the Salmagundi,” Pyle replied. “I hear there are plenty of them and what they lack in quality may be made up in quantity - like New Jersey Champagne.”

Washington is Notified of His Election

On May 19, 1896, Howard Pyle wrote to Woodrow Wilson:

In thinking over the subject for this Sixth Washington Article, I would suggest, by your leave, the following:

1 Thomson, the clerk of Congress, bringing to Washington the official papers notifying him of his election. It seems to me that this is a very good point and I am going on with it now.

Two gentlemen came down from Alexandria along with Thomson and were present during the interview, Thomson addressing the General in a formal speech, to which he replied in as formal a fashion, accepting the honor done him....

Not long after writing (days, maybe, or a week or two), Pyle completed “Thomson, the Clerk of Congress, announcing to Washington, at Mount Vernon, his election to the Presidency,” which illustrated Wilson’s “The First President of the United States” in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for November 1896. When Pyle exhibited the painting in his one-man-shows at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and the St. Botolph Club in Boston in 1897, he described it in this deliberately archaic-sounding way in the catalogues:

The Clerk of Congress Announcing to Washington his election to the Presidency.

Here the Hero is depicted receiving with that calm Reserve that befitted him so well, the Announcement of his Election to the Chief Magistry of our Nation. The sealed Packet lies upon the Table, while Charles Thomson, Esq., addresses the great Man in Terms of respectful Congratulation. The other Figures represent two Gentlemen of quality who accompanied Mr. Thomson from Alexandria upon his grateful Mission.

But here’s how Wilson described the scene:

...on the 7th [of April, 1789] Charles Thomson, the faithful and sedulous gentleman who had been clerk of every congress since that first one in the old colonial days fifteen years ago, got away on his long ride to Mount Vernon to notify Washington of his election. Affairs waited upon the issue of his errand. Washington had for long known what was coming, and was ready and resolute, as of old. There had been no formal nominations for the presidency, and the votes of the electors had lain under seal till the new Congress met and found a quorum; but it was an open secret who had been chosen President, and Washington had made up his mind what to do. Mr. Thomson reached Mount Vernon on the 14th, and found Washington ready to obey his summons at once.

The relative brevity of this passage calls to mind Pyle’s comments to Paul Leicester Ford:

...the historic writer has a great advantage over the draughtsman, in that he need not necessarily state the most minute point in his work. If he is uncertain as to any single part, he may slur that and pass on to something else. The illustrator must have everything as perfectly accurate as he can render it, for the picture represents not only the general description, but a description so particular that it may take pages upon pages to fulfill it in literature.

The original painting belongs to the Boston Public Library.

At the Stibbert Museum, May 14, 1911

STIBBERT MUSEUM, housed in the Villa Stibbert, at Montughi, about a mile and a half beyond the Porta San Gallo. Open on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday for a fee of 1 fr., and on Sunday mornings free. This collection, consisting chiefly of mediaeval armour and of costumes, was formed by the late Chevalier Stibbert, an English subject residing in Florence, who on his death in 1906 bequeathed his valuable collection to the city. The Museo Stibbert was formally opened in May, 1909. (from Florence and her Treasures by Herbert Vaughan, 1911)

Sometime between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Sunday, May 14, 1911, Howard Pyle and an Italian friend visited the Stibbert Museum (or the Museo Stibbert) on the hill of Montughi in Florence. A few days later he wrote about it to Frank Schoonover:

It is really quite wonderful to see it. Many of the suits of armor are filled with models of the period. I think that which interested me perhaps more than anything else was a general of 1700, with a lace coat, jack boots and cuirass complete.* I never saw such an aggregation of interesting old things. Hundreds, yes, thousands of swords, crossed everywhere upon the wall, and bits of armor in all conditions, from the banged and ancient armor eaten through with rust, dug up out of the ground, to the finely polished, carefully preserved armor of the Italian nobles. All kinds of arquebuses and cross-bows, some of them inset with beautifully carved ivory or mother-of-pearl. All over the front of the building was inset with coats of arms and scutcheons, dating back to the thirteenth and fourteenth century. In front were some fragments of Venetian carved marble, and a very beautiful marble well.

(* If I can track down that general, I’ll post a link or a picture.)

Howard Pyle on Art for Advertising

“If it is a legitimate product, such as the DuPont Co.’s or an Insurance Co. or something of a like nature, I think the work is dignified and well worth doing; but if it is to push some patent medicine or breakfast food or something that has no standing, I think it is a dangerous prostitution of one’s art. For an artist must always have back in his mind the idea that what he is doing has no solid standing as a work of art, but is simply done for the sake of earning money. I think this is a dangerous thing.”

Howard Pyle to Stanley Arthurs, May 11, 1911

Odd, Mod Pyle

Little is known about this Howard Pyle sketch, but I don’t doubt its authenticity. While the “modern day” costume of the disheveled, Charles Laughton-like character is unusual, it’s not unique, and the pen and brush work is fairly typical for Pyle circa 1900 - the quick strokes defining the hair, for example, and the rendering of the flesh, not to mention the deft wash of red.

It’s not signed, unfortunately, and the pencilled note “drawn by / Howard Pyle” is not in Pyle’s handwriting. Scrawled on the back we see that it was the property of Emlen McConnell of Haddonfield, New Jersey. Whether McConnell himself wrote this is in dispute - it looks more like “Emelin McConnel” to me - but perhaps he loaned it for exhibition and the exhibitor wrote the note. I just don’t know. The other names written on the back don’t yet ring a bell, either.

McConnell, though, who was born August 2, 1872, in Philadelphia and spent many years in Haddonfield, was a Pyle student of the Drexel days, who also attended both Institute-sponsored summer sessions at Chadd’s Ford in 1898 and 1899. So perhaps the drawing was something McConnell acquired while under Pyle’s tutelage.

“Howard Pyle’s Pictures Grow” (May 2, 1909)

On May 2, 1909, a syndicated article appeared in newspapers across the United States. The writer was James B. Morrow and the subject was Howard Pyle, who Morrow had interviewed earlier that spring (the published piece has a Wilmington dateline of April 26, but Morrow copyrighted it on April 20).

Readers of the The Boston Sunday Globe, St. Louis Globe Democrat, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Herald, among other papers, got to “see” and “hear” a 56-year-old, paint-spattered Pyle, as he “nervously” rocked in a rocking chair and pontificated about art and reminisced about his early life. It was an odd time for him, though: he was at the height of his powers - or, rather, somewhat past the height - and professional disappointments were on the rise. Not only was he wearying of illustration and of teaching, but his desire to transition into a muralist had, so far, been thwarted: he had completed his last commission over two years earlier, and although he was preparing a sketch for a $50,000 mural project, it would meet with severe criticism - and ultimately be abandoned - not long after this article appeared.

Of course, Pyle did have a few aces up his sleeve. Two of the pictures that Morrow may have seen at the studio were the masterpiece, “The Midnight Court Martial,” as well as "Who are we that Heaven should make of the old sea a fowling net?" which came out in Harper’s Monthly for September and October 1909, respectively.

“The Midnight Court Martial” by Howard Pyle (1909)

“Who are we that Heaven should make of the old sea a fowling net?” by Howard Pyle (1909)

Parts of this interview have been quoted here and there, but, as far as I know, this is the first time it’s been reprinted in toto in 102 years.


Howard Pyle's Pictures Grow
by James B. Morrow

In spirit, execution, education, interest, healthfulness and color the concise reply reflected the man - the shoulders of whose coat were thickly daubed with sky-blue and yellow paints - and the studio in which he works. There was a noticeable influence of sincerity and business in the artist and his shop.

Bursting vines, green and gray, clung like monstrous cobwebs to the red walls outside. I observed them as I lifted the brass knocker on the upper half door and let it drop. The building looked fresh and English, suggesting the snug harbor of an author or an architect. The walk of brick upward from the street had a turn and finish that rescued it from commonness. Distinction, once a rare and courtly word, associated with scholars and statesmen, but now a popular noun of tailors and shoemakers when they describe their goods was impressed upon the place.

Inside I saw pictures on easels, completed or half done, colonial tables and chests and models of ancient ships. Howard Pyle, the world’s most famous illustrator, it may be, and a novelist as well, came booming across the room - booming in the sense of energy and not in the matter of audible noise.

Long hair and languishing look? No; short hair and gray, virtually white, where the magnificent head has any hair at all. A tall man with long, straight legs, coils of springs in his feet, eyes blue as a fog, a small mouth, bland, but massive and singularly youthful face, and immense gold spectacles. In vestments he would look like a slashing bishop of the church. A red wig and a short sword; music, high lights and a stage, and behold! Julius Caesar. On the stump, pleading for his party or himself, a hurricane and a winner.

We sit in plain rocking chairs of wood under a great window in the roof. Pyle talks easily and swiftly. He has written books, lectured about art, and in curt sentences and jerky pauses has disciplined young artists who have begged his judgment on their work. He has the gifts of expression, imagination, and style. Furthermore, he would have succeeded at the bar or prospered in a bank.

“For the world which cannot comprehend,” I said, “will you obligingly explain what is meant by those cryptic words, ‘an artistic temperament?’”

“I should say,” and Howard Pyle ceased his nervous rocking for a moment, “that there is no such vice or human quality as an artistic temperament. It is a phrase and nothing more, which is employed to cover a good many delinquencies. Artists, studying the beautiful, want it; but beauty costs money. The teller in the bank, counting in your deposits and money and paying them out, ventures upon a little speculation of his own in Wall st. When he is caught his lawyer would ridicule his case were he to plead any sort of a temperament, artistic or otherwise. Yet, the analogy I draw is not inconsistent. We desire the thing which we specialize in our work and interest.

“Men in my profession sometimes undertake that which is beyond their means. There is a house or a picture, or a rug, or some pottery. It is bought imprudently. Debts press, and duns, if repeated often enough, engender carelessness. Then comrades and admirers, bearing the flimsy mantle called ‘artistic temperament,’ try to hide the follies of the offender against thrift and the elementary principles of sound business. Eminent singers and actors, up during all hours of the night and eating indigestible suppers, are bad tempered the next day. There is an out burst, a cup thrown at a waiter, for instance, followed by more or less nonsensical comment concerning the eccentricities of genius.

“A successful artist,” Howard Pyle continued, “is just like any other successful man - conservative, provident and normal,” he declared. “He does his work and takes care of himself and his credit. Titian, the Venetian, industrious and ambitious, had ministers and kings for his friends and companions. Leonardo da Vinci, whose ‘Last Supper,’ the wall painting at Milan, has made him immortal, was a brilliant architect, sculptor, engineer, scientist and musician. Raphael, tremendously practical, was not only the architect of St. Peter’s, but was an able archeologist and an authority on the antiquities of Rome. Michaelangelo wrote poetry, drew plans for splendid buildings and was one of the most learned anatomists of his time. The ‘old masters’ were sensible men. So are the young masters, whether they be artists, lawyers, doctors or preachers. Nor is any great achievement the completed effort of an inspired instant. Nothing worth while is done without toil, and toil compels one to be sober minded and careful.”

“Candidly,” I said, “what is your opinion of the paintings of the ‘old masters?’”

“That their best work is unequaled. However, many of their pictures, notwithstanding the veneration of subsequent generations, are inferior in quality. An artist or a writer is measured by his best work. Even the old masters were human and were not free from the limitations and infirmities of the rest of mankind. It is sufficient that their greatest work at its greatest is among the greatest in the world.”

“Is art making any headway in the United States?” I inquired.

“Splendid headway,” Mr. Pyle answered enthusiastically. “Consider my own art of illustration. The magazines are spending millions of dollars for pictures; enough each year, I dare say, to build a battleship. Are they spending it to indulge a sentiment? Do they want something pretty for themselves? Not at all. They are hardheaded men of business and have long since discovered that the people want and demand the best pictures that are obtainable. Why is Minnesota spending an immense sum of money for a state building and paying many thousands of dollars to mural artists? Why do we see pictures, cut from periodicals, hung in almost every American home? Why do manufacturers, even of those calendars that are given away, attempt to make of them works of art? Why does a business man hire the best artist he can find and pay him $500 or $1000 for a painting to advertise his wares? All along the line art is making progress in America; in no other country of the world are pictures of every kind so much appreciated.”

“What is the yearly income of a good magazine illustrator?”

“I would not attempt to give figures,” Mr. Pyle answered, “although they are often printed - generally with exaggeration - in the newspapers. The published earnings of an artist are nearly always like the estimate of a rich man’s estate before his death - a trifle magnified. Maybe illustrators are not paid so handsomely as are other men of relative rank in their professions, yet, doubtless, their remuneration is sufficient.

“I suppose art offers its own rewards outside of its money returns,” Mr. Pyle went on to say. “It must be many youngsters to embark in a profession that promises so few prizes and so many planks. Since I began my professional career - that was more than 30 years ago - I imagine that at least 150,000 persons have studied art in this country. Out of that vast army of men and women not 150 have attained to fame and material success.

“Illustrating, especially, is difficult, because an illustrator is compelled to tell something, or to make an appeal that will reach a million people. He must, of course, be an artist in the technical knowledge of drawing and the use of colors. Besides he must have originality and imagination. Many young artists, splendidly equipped with technical knowledge, carry their illustrations to publishers only to meet with disappointment because their work would make no impression on the hearts or the intelligence of the public.”

“Are not some of the pictures in weekly and monthly publications,” I asked, “reproductions of paintings made expressly for the purpose?”

“I suppose all illustrations are intended to illustrate a text. The best illustrations, however, are those that stand and are used upon their own intrinsic excellence. They are, or should be, copied colors and all, as nearly as possible by mechanical processes. The magazine pays for the use of such paintings. If the paintings are important they are returned to the artists. Many of the originals sell at very good prices.”

“I have been told that students at your art school pay no tuition and that no one ever comes here except with your consent previously given?”

“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Pyle replied, “I am not running an art school. About 30 young students have settled in Wilmington, and more would be here if they could find studio accommodations. We have what might be called a little art settlement, community. The artists are privileged to come to me every morning at 9 o’clock for suggestions and for criticisms of their work. I make no charge, of course, for such service. Formerly, I lectured each Monday evening, but now I have a class in composition on Saturday evenings.”

“You have never visited Europe, professionally,” I said, knowing that Mr. Pyle is distinctively an American in all his work - painting, illustrating, and writing - and the founder of a recognized system of national art.

“I have never visited Europe in any capacity, either as a student or a traveller,” Mr. Pyle answered. “As a young man I had a fine opportunity to study abroad as long as I desired. The person who made the offer only required that I should send him a painting once a year. But I was then hard at work and felt that it would not be progression to lose time again as a student. Since then I have been busy and have felt no need of Europe.”

“Will you give me a picture of your development as an artist?” I said.

“Yes, quite willingly, if you want it, though I cannot get your point of view in journeying to Wilmington for so unimportant a matter. My earliest childhood was lived in a quaint old house of the colonial period not far from this city. I am glad to say that my mother had an intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of art and literary values, and her influence formed and shaped my earliest studies. She habitually read to us from the best literature of the day, which, in 1860, was very good indeed. The leading periodicals came into our house, Punch among the rest. Tom Taylor was one of the contributors, and Cornhill Magazine, of which Thackeray was then editor. Dickens, Scott and Shakespere are good foundations for a sound literary taste. When I took up a book myself it was apt to be Grimm’s fairy stories. Such was our family life indoors. Outside there was an old garden in which grew many roses, so many that we picked them by the bushel and made rose water after the ancient and customary formula.

“I attended a good school in Wilmington, and remember that I was fond of drawing pictures, but was not a precocious youngster in any sense or manner. Plenty of other boys drew as well and even better. Still, I liked to draw and write. One spring, I recollect, when the birds were singing in the trees and the flowers were blooming, and the restlessness and longings of the season were stirring in my heart, that I went to an old ivy-covered rock near home to compose a poem. I took pencil and paper along, but after I had seated myself amid the ivy I remembered that I had not yet learned to read or write.

“At the age of 16 I left home to be a student at a private art school in Philadelphia. The school was kept by a man [F. A. Van der Wielen] who won a gold medal at Antwerp, the center, perhaps, of the most technical art in Europe. I remained three years in Philadelphia, getting a vast fund of information and a wide knowledge of the purely practical or professional side of drawing. I studied anatomy under Dr William W. Keene [sic], the now famous surgeon and medical author, and liked it immensely. My technical was so good that I could draw the nude figure without a model - and could draw it accurately, too. Throughout my life I have been a fast worker, one of the results, perhaps, of my early training in Philadelphia.

“But I was not taught how to apply my knowledge. The imagination was not trained. We followed hard and fast rules on the theory that pictures were made by technical knowledge. I could draw - anyone can learn to do that - but young as I was, I soon found that execution alone, no matter how skilful, cannot make a picture that the world cares for. Any man of education can learn to write correctly, but it is only the very few who can gain and hold the interest of the public.

“My work lay idle for several years while I experimented. Finally - it was in 1876 - I wrote a verse about a magic pill that instantly turned an aged person, namely a person fretting over his years, into a terrible boy. It was illustrated by some crude drawings in pen and ink. I sent it to the Century Magazine, then called Scribner’s, and, to my joy, it was accepted for a department called, I think, ‘Bric-a-Brac.’ Then my mother read about a drove of wild ponies on an island off the coast of Virginia. At her suggestion, I went to the island and put the ponies into an illustrated story. Several other little compositions were taken at about the same time, and so I decided to move to New York and try my luck at making a living.

“No great ambition was in my mind. Ordinarily, the usual young man, at first, has only modest aspirations. He goes forward by steps, each one a little higher, his development being altogether natural, until he achieves that which lies latent in his mind at the beginning. I had done small things and vaguely hoped for larger ones, but made no effort to look very far into the future. It is well that youth is sightless and trustful. If its grasp were too wide when it starts on the journey of life, if it could comprehend everything that is to come, it would reach for all, only to lose even that which it has.

“New York, then as now, was the richest market in the world for ideas. Its first and loudest call is for imagination. I preach imagination at every opportunity, because it is not only the chief pillar in the structure of art, but the corner stone of all success. In those first days of my young endeavor I wrote verses and sketches and illustrated them with pictures. They were disposed of without many disappointments to magazines and weekly publications.

“Compositions containing a new or unique idea, such, for instance, as a young fellow standing on the shoulders of a monk and passing a valentine through a window to a pretty girl, were sold easily and at good prices. Editors did not insist upon “strong” ideas in those days; anything would do that was “original.” Some of my suggestions were roughly put on paper to be developed by experienced artists on the periodicals to which they were sent. All in all I did well, making $25 some weeks and in others as much as $50. I left my cheap lodgings and, with a couple of friends, took a studio, working and sleeping there, but eating at a restaurant.

“I had been in New York for a year and a half, perhaps, when I painted my first important picture. It was called ‘A Wreck in the Offing.’ A crew of a life saving station were in a room playing cards.

“I knew that the idea was worth at least $15, even if the picture were rejected. But I neglected to consider that the art editor might be absent. It was a shock, there fore, when I found that he had gone home for the day. However, I left the picture.

“Walking back to my studio, miles away, I stopped to see Frederick Church, who was always kind to young artists, but I could not bring myself to the point of letting him know that I was penniless. I told the young men who shared my studio that I was ill and had lost my appetite. But when they had gone to the restaurant I searched my old clothing and found a half dollar; it paid for my dinner that night, my breakfast next morning, and my car fare back to Harper’s.

“My nerves were on edge when at last I faced the art editor. My picture, big as a house, was standing on his desk. I felt sure, the minute I saw it, that it had been declined. ‘Mr. Harper,’ the art editor said, ‘has looked at your picture and likes it. Indeed, he intends to give it a double page in the Weekly.’

“Since that eventful morning,” Mr. Pyle continued, “my ways have been in pleasant places. I was paid $75 for ‘The Wreck in the Offing,’ and the first thing I did was to take a friend to Delmonico’s for luncheon. I want to add that I thought I foresaw the time when illustrating would be a very important part of art life in this country. I never lost confidence in my early judgment and I am glad I have lived to see American illustrating a dignified and major factor in our national art evolution.”

“Why did you leave New York and come back to Wilmington?”

“I found the diversions in New York too many and attractive for sustained and serious effort. When I made up my mind to move I didn’t linger, but packed my effects and bought a ticket.”

“Do you see the completed picture before you begin to paint it?”

“No; if I did, my work, I fear, would be without much value. A picture, and it is the same with a book or a business, must grow under the hand that creates it. A general idea of the intended picture exists in the mind - sometimes quite vividly - but it only develops into a form when it is outlined and it only takes final shape as it is executed upon the canvas. It is the same in a literary production. A writer knows in a general way what he intends to say, but the work develops as he progresses in its execution. At the end the characters and the story are usually altogether different from the author’s conception at the beginning.”

“How do you work and when do you play?”

“I come to my studio in the morning and stay until 6 o’clock in the summer and so long as I can see in the winter. When I shut the door of this building I shut my mind to paint, pencils and pictures. I don’t think of art except when I am here. I don’t talk it. I stand up while I work and that is all the physical exercise I ever get. My recreation is found in the social life of the fine old city of Wilmington, and it is equal to the best in the United States.”