Pyle on Saint-Gaudens’s Sherman Monument

On May 30, 1903, Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Sherman Monument was unveiled at the southeast corner of Central Park in New York City. Although there’s no known evidence that Howard Pyle was present at the ceremony, we do know that he saw it in place within the next few days. Pyle, who delivered an address at Yale University’s School of Fine Arts in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 1, and passed through Manhattan on the way there and back, wrote to Saint-Gaudens on June 4:

I have just returned from New York and I feel that I want to tell you how beautiful I think your Sherman Memorial Statue to be.

It impresses me, as your work always does, as being not only beautiful but great, and I am sure that it is not prejudice upon my part but a matter of calm judgment that leads me to feel that you are easily the leading sculptor in the world today -

I could say more - but will not do so.

Saint-Gaudens’s reply is lost, but Pyle’s letter seems to have reminded him to send a copy of his bronze Robert Louis Stevenson medallion, which he’d promised to give Pyle a year earlier - after Pyle had sent Saint-Gaudens his pen-and-ink drawing “The Song of Peace”. Pyle received it on July 15, 1903, and apparently it’s still owned by his descendants.

Howard Pyle at Valley Forge, 1909

I just saw this interesting article by Hannah Boettcher on "Fieldwork in Valley Forge". Among other things, it shows that Howard Pyle visited Valley Forge on September 18, 1909, and signed the Washington Memorial Chapel guestbook, along with his wife and son Godfrey, as well as two Wilmington friends, John Warner (1884-1911) and his mother, Mary Cowgill Corbit Warner (1848-1923), who probably accompanied the Pyles on their trip.

Howard Pyle Meets Walter Crane

An illustration from Yankee Doodle by Howard Pyle (1881)

121 years ago today Howard Pyle met the celebrated British artist-illustrator-designer-decorator-author Walter Crane in Philadelphia.

Although Pyle’s known correspondence and writings are (so far) void of any Crane letters or mentions, Crane was clearly a big influence on Pyle - particularly on his work from the early 1880s, like Yankee Doodle, The Lady of Shalott and Pepper & Salt. And if Pyle didn’t necessarily acknowledge this, some critics did:

In the completeness and appropriateness of the cuts the book [Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood] reminds us of the best work of Mr. Walter Crane, and it can best be compared perhaps with Mr. Crane’s charming edition of the Grimm Fairy Tales... But as Mr. Crane’s art is thoroughly English Mr. Pyle’s is quite American. (The Literary World, September 22, 1883)

In 1891-92, Crane and a collection of his “Water-colours, Designs and Decorations” went on an extensive tour of the United States. In May they were in Philadelphia and Crane recalled in An Artist’s Reminiscences (1907):

My collection was shown at the Arts Club,...a dinner was given there in my honour and to inaugurate the opening. Among the guests I was interested to meet Mr. Howard Pyle, the distinguished artist, whose work I had so often admired in the American magazines. 

The champagne flowed very freely on this occasion as well as speeches, and nothing could exceed the hospitality of the Club. 

Altogether, we had a very good time at Philadelphia, and carried away many pleasant memories of the Quaker city.

Sounds like fun. But if only we knew what Pyle thought of the encounter, because a few months after it, a curious paragraph by Edward W. Bok (editor of the Ladies Home Journal) appeared in the Brooklyn Standard Union of December 24, 1892:

One thing is certain: no man has come over to us recently who created such an unfavorable impression with every one whom he met as did Walter Crane; and I say this with all due respect to Mr. Crane’s undoubted skill as an artist. But his personality struck every one as exceedingly disagreeable, and at no time have I heard of a single instance where he took the slightest pains to make himself agreeable. At two dinners at which Mr. Crane happened to, given, too, in his honor [sic], it seemed to me as if he threw a perfect damper upon both occasions. I recall one instance where Mr. Crane and Howard Pyle were thrown together, or, rather, seated next to each other at the table. Now, it is hard to imagine any one who could be unsusceptible to the deliciously frank and unrestrained charm of Howard Pyle’s conversation. But Mr. Crane was simply unmoved, the most unresponsive man in a delightful conversation I ever saw. I watched him closely upon this occasion and I actually believed that the man was bored more than he was interested. I have actually yet to hear of one kind thing said of Walter Crane in a social way during his American sojourn.

Maybe Pyle’s side of the story will turn up, one of these days.

George Washington’s First Inauguration

“The Inauguration” by Howard Pyle, engraved by F. S. King

Today marks the 224th anniversary of George Washington’s first inauguration as president of the United States. The ceremony was held April 30, 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in the city of New York - then the new nation’s capitol.

Howard Pyle pictured this great event at least twice. He painted his first version, evidently, in the summer of 1888, not long after finishing his children’s book Otto of the Silver Hand. The black and white oil painting (about 23.5 x 16 inches) was then engraved on wood by Francis Scott King (1850-1913) and appeared in John Bach McMaster’s article “Washington’s Inauguration” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for April 1889.

At the same time the magazine was on the newsstands, Pyle’s painting was exhibited at the Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of George Washington as First President of the United States at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, from April 17 to May 8, 1889. Eventually, it wound up in the hands of collector William F. Gable, then it was auctioned by Freeman’s in Philadelphia in 1932, and ultimately it wound up at The Mint Museum, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

“The Inauguration” by Howard Pyle, via The Mint Museum

About a dozen years later, Pyle revisited the scene, ostensibly for Woodrow Wilson’s “Colonies and Nations,” then being serialized - and accompanied by 21 Pyle pictures - in Harper’s Monthly Magazine. In a March 28, 1901, letter to Wilson, Pyle suggested it as an illustration and explained: “I have already made an illustration for it for McMaster’s article, but I think I could represent the street in front of the old State House, a crowd of people and Washington on the balcony.”

Wilson approved of the idea and Pyle likely painted it sometime in April or May. For some unknown reason, however, it wasn’t reproduced in the magazine; rather, it appeared in the expanded, book version of Wilson’s articles, titled A History of the American People, published by Harper and Brothers in October 1902. Pyle’s black and white oil (23.5 x 15.5 inches) now belongs to the Delaware Art Museum.

“Inauguration of Washington at New York” by Howard Pyle

Lorelei

Howard Pyle nudes are few and far between. This one come from the Library of Congress and a super-high-resolution version (43.1 MB) is available for download and microscopic inspection.

The story behind this pen and ink drawing is a mystery: it almost looks like something made for publication, but perhaps the publisher - or Pyle himself - found it too racy for Victorian or Edwardian eyes (or whatever the American equivalent would be). Or maybe it’s something Pyle whipped up at a stag evening of sketching with friends or students.

Tthe drawing depicts the lyre-playing Lorelei, whose legend is explained in an article that appeared in The Advance for November 9, 1905:

Perhaps, some of you have heard of the beautiful maiden who sat on a rock in the Rhine and sang such beautiful songs that the fishers who rowed past left their oars and gazed only at the lovely river nymph, until their boats were dashed to pieces on the rock. The Lorelei, for that was her name, is never heard now, but very few people Know what has become of her.

At first the Lorelei was a care-free river maid. Her greatest pleasure was to float on the rippling Rhine, or to sing joyous songs to the moon and stars. She knew nothing, and cared less, about the wide world. She loved her own beauty and liked to prove her power by enticing men to death in the depths of the Rhine. What did she care for mankind? They were nothing to her. At last a young knight appeared in a boat on the river. She saw him and loved nim, and without thinking of her fatal influence she began to sing. He turned his head, saw her, and leaped into the river to swim to the rock. She would have saved him, but it was too late. He was dragged down by the current and she saw his dying eyes still turned toward her. She dashed her lyre on the rocks and plunged into her cave.

When she again came forth into the upper air. her character was changed. How could she scatter death and destruction any longer? It was true, she had nothing to lose, for the only one she had ever loved was dead, but her love and her sorrow had made her feel for the rest of mankind, and she thought: “What if some mother or maiden waits in a far-off cottage for her loved one, and wails in vain, because I have enticed him into the whirlpool.” So she left her rock in the river, anj, as it is written in the Btory, was never seen again. She laid aside her magic beauty and wanders, a simple maiden, through the world. In sorrow for the woe she has caused she does her best to comfort all the Borrowing. Never again in the daytime did she appear on the enchanted rock. Only sometimes, at night, when the moon and stars are hidden under stonnclouds and no boats can be seen on the Rhine, she returns to her old home, and seated ion the rock, sings sad songs of love and parting. But she always departs before morning, to return to the busy, working, sorrowing world.

Howard Pyle Lecture in Reading, PA - Tonight!

I only just saw this, so apologies for the short notice!

The Delaware Art Museum's Curator of American Art, Heather Campbell Coyle - who knows Howard Pyle inside and out - is giving a talk tonight at the Reading Public Museum.

For more information, call 610-371-5850 x223. Reservations are required and the cost is $20 per member, $30 per non-member.

Blueskin Stands Up

“He lay silent and still, with his face half buried in the sand” (1890)

Howard Pyle painted “He lay silent and still, with his face half buried in the sand” for his story “Blueskin the Pirate” in 1890, and it was first published in that year’s Christmas issue of The Northwestern Miller.

About a decade later, when, it seems, Pyle was thinking of compiling his own proto-Book of Pirates (or at least some kind of collection of his stories), he asked for a copy of the magazine from its editor, William Cromwell Edgar. Edgar soon complied and on March 13, 1900, Pyle wrote to thank him:

It is always a matter of some dread to renew my acquaintance with my one-time-made illustrations, but this, although made more than ten years ago, seems to me to stand up remarkably well alongside my present work, and I am very glad that you should have so good an example.

The original - and much more luminous - black and white oil painting (23.25 x 15.25 inches) is now partly owned by the Brandywine River Museum.

Pyle used to do that to his paintings now and then

I spent Friday in the Delaware Art Museum’s library and among the many things I looked at (again) were three enormous, leather-bound scrapbooks of Howard Pyle’s published work.

Pyle and his secretary Gertrude Brincklé seem to have started compiling them in 1910. The first leaves of Volume I feature Pyle’s own handwritten comments about some of his earliest printed things. But then he either lost interest, got distracted or too busy, or left for Italy, so Miss Brincklé must have done the bulk of the finding, trimming, gluing, and annotating. Most of her notes - besides basic bibliographical ones - concern the known owners of particular pictures and if she had posed for any of them. However (as I mentioned in my last post) she also wrote beneath at least a half dozen reproductions the disturbing words, “Destroyed by H.P.” or “Destroyed by Mr. Pyle”.

Now, in the course of my Pyle research I’ve been putting together the skeleton of a very rudimentary catalogue raisonnée (well, a checklist) of his pictures, so it’s always good to know where things have wound up. But it’s never pleasant to learn that certain things have been lost for good. I suppose that if Pyle considered his actions “justifiable picturacide” then we should accept the fate of what he deemed unworthy. Plenty of artists have done what he did, after all... But would if I could go back in time and rescue these from the trash or the furnace or wherever he disposed of them - despite their faults and Pyle’s low opinion.

Anyway, here’s a little memorial gallery for these six gone-but-not-fogotten paintings.

“He climbed the stairs slowly, for he was growing feeble”

From “The Story of Adhelmar” by James Branch Cabell
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1904

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“Catherine de Vaucelles, in her garden”

From “In Necessity’s Mortar” by James Branch Cabell
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, October 1904

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“I know thy heart, that thou dost love me well”

From “The King’s Jewel” by James Edmund Dunning
Harper’s Weekly, December 10, 1904

Note: next to Miss Brincklé’s “Destroyed by Mr. Pyle" someone wrote a question mark, so maybe this one escaped the axe, after all?

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“A man lay prone there, half turned upon his face” also known as “After the Battle”

From “Melicent” by Warwick Deeping
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, January 1905

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“Sir John shook his spear at the ladies who sneered”

From “Melicent” by Warwick Deeping
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, January 1905

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“With a cry, Shallum flung up his arms and jumped” also known as “A Leap from the Cliff”

From “An Amazing Belief” by Mrs. Henry Dudeney
Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1905

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Ave atque vale!

The Late Catherine de Vaucelles

“Catherine de Vaucelles, in her garden” by Howard Pyle (1904)

What do you think of this Howard Pyle painting? It’s not so bad, right? It’s hard to see in this off-register plate, but it’s got its strengths: the dress and the blossoms are handled nicely, the composition and color are interesting... Aren’t they?

I’ve shown this one before. In The New York Times Saturday Review of Books for October 22, 1904, it was singled out for some stinging criticism:

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.

In fairness to Pyle, the above comments reflect more on the relatively primitive reproduction than on the painting itself. So it would help to see the original oil on canvas.

If only. It turns out that Pyle wasn’t very pleased with it, either. Yesterday, looking in one of Pyle’s scrapbooks at the Delaware Art Museum’s library I found “Catherine de Vaucelles, in her garden” and underneath the plate, his secretary Gertrude Brincklé had written: “Destroyed by H.P.”

I found five others - all published in 1904 and 1905 - with the same, sad note. I’ll memorialize them another time.

Happy 160th Birthday, Howard Pyle!

“It looks very much posed”

The above photograph, showing Howard Pyle with “The Evacuation of Charlestown” on his easel in his Wilmington studio, has now and then been dated 1897 and 1898.

But 1897 is incorrect because Pyle only started the painting in mid-1898: Frank Schoonover remembered that Pyle (his teacher at the time) was working on it during the Drexel Institute’s first Summer School of Illustration - which officially opened on June 23, 1898:

I recall that Mr. Pyle set up a very poor three-legged easel on the lawn in front of the house at Chadds Ford, and put his canvas on the easel. Miss Ellen Bernard Thompson...was painting something on the lower side of the road, and just beyond her was the Indian painter, Angel DeCora. There were some chairs and books of engravings of Colonial ships of the line out on the porch, and there were also the Pyle children playing around in the yard. The sky was very blue that day, with many floating clouds. Mr. Pyle asked me to fasten the canvas so that it would not shake, so I went back into the house and got the things needed.

Mr. Pyle then sat down on a kitchen chair and started to work under an apple tree, but he had no mahl stick. Then he said, “Frank, I see a fine straight sucker up there - climb up and cut it off.” I did so...

It was amazing to see him do this painting with so many distractions such as the children’s running around and so forth.... The painting has a shadow across the water like the shadow of the lawn, and the sky is as it was that day at Chadds Ford with the drifting clouds making shadows on the uneven lawn, which was much the color of the water in the picture. This was a lesson to all the students to interpret the things around them when painting.

“The Evacuation of Charlestown” was later packed up and hurried off to be photographed and made into a half-tone plate, just in time to appear in Scribner’s Magazine for September 1898. The Delaware Art Museum now owns the original painting (oil on canvas 23.25 x 35.25" - if you’re keeping score).



But back to the above photo: 1898 is probably the wrong date, too. Years ago, looking in a box at the Delaware Art Museum’s library, I saw - I think - two glass-plate negatives made by Cyrus Peter Miller Rumford. There, too, I saw Rumford’s scribbled notes stating that these were “Portraits of Howard Pyle for Home Journal ’99” and (provided I’m reading my own scribbles correctly) it seems that Rumford arrived with his camera at Pyle’s Wilmington studio at 3.00 p.m. one January day in 1899 and took a total of four photos.

Rumford, who had turned 26 that month, was a recent Harvard graduate (Class of 1897) and already a prize-winning photographer. And, apparently, either from his own or Pyle’s initiative he made the photos for an article in the April 1899 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, titled “The Journal’s Artists in Their Studios” - but for some reason the magazine chose not to print them.

Pyle’s own opinion of the photos sounds mixed: on February 11, 1899, he dictated the following letter:

Wilmington, Del.

My dear Mr Rumford:

I am very much obliged to you for the photograph of myself in my studio. It looks very much posed, but that is the fault of the subject and not of the photographer. It was very kind of you to remember me.

Once more thanking you,

I am

Very truly yours

Howard Pyle

February eleventh.

I don’t know why Pyle says “the photograph” and not “the photographs” - maybe Rumford only sent a print of what he considered the best. But “very much posed” is about right: these two known photos show a seated Pyle - who usually stood at his easel - stiffly “at work” on the already-finished “Evacuation of Charlestown”.

I should note, too, that Pyle’s letter to Rumford was handwritten by Pyle’s secretary, Anna W. Hoopes, and although it appears to be signed by Pyle, the signature is, in fact, the work of Miss Hoopes as well. In a 1935 talk she explained:

When rushed at the end of the day with correspondence, [Mr. Pyle] often asked me to sign his letters; and I became so proficient at imitating his signature, that he once made me promise not to copy his handwriting, jokingly remarking that sometime I might want to sign his checks.

When Howard Pyle “Struck Pan”

“The little pink finger and the huge black index came to a full stop under this commandment”

“Work is beginning to roll in upon me at last, and at last I think I have ‘struck pan,’” wrote Howard Pyle to his mother on February 28, 1878 - 135 years ago today. “My work is beginning to pay better too and I think before long I shall be able to pay off my debts to father in toto.”

Although I haven’t yet been able to find another use of Pyle’s idiom “struck pan” - it’s clearly a hybrid gold-mining term, somewhere between “struck pay dirt” and “pan out”.

Anyway, after over a year of living in New York, the 24-year-old Pyle had finally found himself making real headway as an illustrator. He credited his “A Wreck in the Offing!” as having “really launched me” - The Book Buyer for October 1888 said of it, “This drawing was published as a double-page engraving in Harper’s Weekly, and brought Mr. Pyle at once into prominence.”

But let’s let Pyle himself explain some of the work that he had been doing soon after his “first success” - and apologies in advance for his unfortunate racial slur:

I have just finished a picture for Harper’s Monthly of an old darky giving a lecture to a naughty little girl. It was quite a success and they are going to put it into the hands of the best engraver in New York City, Mr. Smithwick. They gave me two pictures to do for them in illustration to a most excellent story of modern Spanish life. They are beyond all comparison the best things I have ever done. I don’t think I am as a general rule inclined to be “cock almighty” about my work but for these two designs I can say that they are so far beyond anything I have ever done before that I can hardly realize their being my own work. They are not finished yet, but so far every touch I have put on them has improved them.

“She went by without looking at him”

The first one represents a Spanish caballero standing against the side of a bridge looking after his Dulcinea whom he has mortally offended by a lampoon written in a fit of jealousy. She is “soaring” past him with a scornful expression on her face and he is looking after her in a beseeching way. The scene is early morning and I think I have gotten a real feeling of early sunlight in the picture. I borrowed a Spanish cloak from an artist friend of mine that almost entirely covers the modern European dress and which with the addition of a sombrero gives him quite a picturesque look. I hired a Spanish woman’s costume in which I posed my female model Jenny Watts, a very pretty ladylike girl, and I tell you, she cut quite a shine!

Fermina opens the casket

The story goes on to say that after having thus mortally offended his sweetheart and being for some time unable to regain her love the cavalier finally succeeds by sending her a casket. In the casket was the pen with which he had written, broken; under the pen, a sheet of paper where was written in his blood “Retribution,” and under the paper his right hand. This, of course, “dropped” the girl. A very effective dénouement, I think. The scene I took for illustration was when she is just opening the box, or rather, had just opened it, the horror not yet fully dawned upon her mind. This was Mr. Alden’s suggestion. And I have made an illustration that some of my artist friends say shows not only talent but genius - I only hope it is so. Mr. Abbey says it is one of the best things that have been done in New York illustrating.

By the way, “The little pink finger and the huge black index came to a full stop under this commandment” was engraved, in the end, by Frederick Juengling, not John G. Smithwick, and published in Harper’s Monthly for July 1878. It illustrated “Daddy Will: A Glimpse of Ancient Dixie” by Charles D. Deshler. Pyle’s original black and white gouache painting showed up on the market in 2006, I think. And “She went by without looking at him” and “Fermina opens the casket” illustrated “Manuel Menendez” by Charles Carroll in Harper’s Monthly for August 1878.

Howard Pyle: From Idea to Illustration

On Saturday, March 9, 2013, at 11.30 a.m., I’ll be giving a talk entitled “Howard Pyle: From Idea to Illustration” at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. You can register in advance for it here.

Gamboling in the Great Game of Human Redemption

Crisis Magazine recently featured an interesting review of - or, rather, an essay on - Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood as a kind of Christian parable. The devout Pyle probably would have approved of this interpretation.

Howard Pyle and the Groundhog

“According to the tradition of the ‘ground-hog’ the weather should have broken by now, but this time the ‘ground-hog’ was a prophet neither in his own country nor out of it. We read that you also on the other side of the ocean are suffering a like bitter winter and, indeed, the whole earth seems to be girdled by a belt of ice. I suppose that we should take comfort that one is not worse off than ones neighbours but I do not know that that fact makes the thermometer any higher.”

Howard Pyle to Thomas Francis Bayard (in London), February 10, 1895.

Poor Richard

Howard Pyle drew “Poor Richard” for the programme/menu of the Franklin Inn Club’s celebration of Benjamin Franklin’s 200th birthday held on January 6, 1906, in Philadelphia.

Pyle was a member of the club, but did he attend the party? Maybe not: instead, he might have opted to go to the Century Association’s Twelfth Night at Eagleroost festivities in New York.

Pyle, Taft, and the Panama Canal

On January 5, 1905, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Pyle attended the Cabinet Dinner at the White House, where they dined on Harlequin Sandwiches, Potage Clear Green Turtle, Curled Celery, Terrapin à la Baltimore, Supreme of Chicken Villeroi with fresh mushrooms, Egyptian Quails à l'Estouffade - among other delicacies - and later stayed over night as guests of President Roosevelt.

Also at the dinner was Secretary of War William Howard Taft. After Taft was elected in 1908, Pyle wrote to congratulate him and said:

...I remember sitting at a small table in the White House with you and Mr. Cadwalader after the Cabinet dinner, and hearing you tell Mr. Cadwalader of your intentions concerning the Panama Canal. What you said to Mr. Cadwalader was said so simply and so unaffectedly that I carried away with me the impression that you were one of the strongest men in the world.

Pyle told others of his encounter with Taft that night - Edward Noble Vallandigham, for one, recalled of his friend Pyle:

He became some years ago an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Roosevelt, and was several times entertained at the White House. Upon one of these occasions he met Mr. Taft, then of the cabinet, heard him talk of the Panama Canal, and came away deeply impressed with his easy mastery of a great subject. “He seemed,” said Pyle, “as familiar with that vast undertaking as I should be with the laying of a drain in my back yard.”

Pyle’s enthusiasm for Taft - which seems to have been kindled 108 years ago tonight - eventually led him to provide some last minute, but apparently invaluable assistance to Taft’s 1908 campaign.

But more on that another time. Now it’s off to bed for the Pyles, where they can digest the above-mentioned items - as well as their Smithfield Ham Glace (Hot) with Madeira sauce and spinach, their Peaches Melba and their Blue Point Oysters - and brace themselves for breakfast with Theodore Roosevelt.

Frank E. Schoonover - A Long Life in Art

Yes, yet another Pyle-related video to watch. Here, the story of Frank E. Schoonover (1877-1972), one of Howard Pyle’s longest-lived and most devoted students, is told by his three grandchildren, who were interviewed in the Wilmington studio their grandfather used from 1906 on (after Pyle had pushed several “graduates” from his own nest of studios a few blocks away). Home movies and audio recordings of an elderly Schoonover are a nice addition to this documentary - it’s always great to see these folks move around and speak. So take a look. And while you’re there, also poke around the Frank E. Schoonover Fund and the Schoonover Studios sites.

A Film About Allen Tupper True

Allen Tupper True

Denver-born artist Allen Tupper True (1881-1955) joined Howard Pyle’s class in May 1902 and his abundant letters home are a rich source of information on Pyle and his students and their lives in and around Chadd’s Ford and Wilmington (they’re also a great complement to True’s classmate and studiomate N. C. Wyeth’s letters to his family).

Now (and for some time past, perhaps) an hour-long documentary called “Allen True’s West” is available on Colorado Public Television’s website. The quality isn't great, but a DVD can also be had.

The film showcases True’s later career as a muralist and touches only slightly on the “Pyle years” (and it’s not without its errors: enrollment to the Howard Pyle School of Art - not the “Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art” - wasn’t limited “to only twelve students” - and Pyle resigned from McClure’s Magazine before the plan to have True join him as an assistant could be realized. Also, it’s implied that Pyle took a cut of the fees his students received for published work, which is incorrect.) Even so, it’s well worth watching and learning more about True’s life and art, which have gotten relatively little attention.

George Harding, Gordon McCouch, Thonton Oakley, N. C. Wyeth, Allen True, and (seated) Howard Pyle, circa 1903

In Praise of Cass Gilbert

Cass Gilbert, circa 1907 (via the Minnesota Historical Society)

“Your own life has been a life of success gratifying to all your friends, and the gratification they feel is enhanced a hundred-fold by the consciousness that that success has been well earned by a man who deserves to possess it. For such large hearts and generous spirits as that which you possess not only make the world a brighter and a happier place in which to dwell, but also leave their marks behind them in works of beauty and of grace.”

Howard Pyle to Cass Gilbert, January 2, 1907

Raising the First National Flag, January 1, 1776

“Raising the First American Flag, January 1, 1776” by C. O. DeLand

No, this isn’t a long-lost Howard Pyle: it’s by Clyde Osmer DeLand, who painted it under Pyle’s supervision at the Drexel Institute in the fall of 1897. As Pyle explained in a January 1898 description of his School of Illustration:

...I hold a “Composition Class” every week, some of the compositions submitted being of an excellence sufficient to admit their being used in pictorial form - page and double-page cuts - by the more important illustrated periodicals....

To cultivate independence, the compositions made by the pupils are from time to time submitted to some leading illustrated periodical or newspaper, and if accepted are worked up into a picture with only verbal criticism upon my part.

Such was the case with one of DeLand’s drawings which, after meeting with Pyle’s approval, was submitted to and approved by Harper’s Weekly. DeLand then got an official order for the picture and started painting.

Although it’s not a very well-known aspect of his mentoring, Pyle encouraged his students to write as well as illustrate, just as he had done with great success. Some, but not many, followed his advice, including DeLand who supplied his own text for “Raising the First American Flag, January 1, 1776” in the January 1, 1898, issue of Harper’s Weekly. In fact, it’s possible that DeLand (who turned 25 when the magazine was on the newsstands) was the first Pyle student to have his own illustrated text published. Here’s what he wrote:

THE FIRST NATIONAL FLAG
by Clyde O. Deland

Prospect Hill (known also as Mount Pisgah) was the strongest fortification of the American army during the siege of Boston, and it was here that the Union flag was unfurled for the first time January 1, 1776, the day on which the new Continental army was organized.

Upon that day copies of the King’s speech at the opening of Parliament had been sent from Boston by General Howe to Washington. The speech was one better fitted to arouse opposition than submission to the English throne. It stated that the British nation was too spirited and powerful to give up those colonies which had been protected for so many years with “much expense of blood and treasure”; that both its army and navy had been strengthened, and that negotiations for foreign aid were already entered into. The English authorities entertained great hopes of the salutary effects of this message from the throne to the rebellious Americans. Accordingly the hoisting of the Union flag and the discharge of thirteen guns that saluted it were hailed with great delight by the British officers, who supposed it to be a token of submission to the crown.

Referring to these circumstances, Washington, in a letter to Joseph Reed, dated January 4, 1776, said: “The speech I send you. A volume of them were sent out by the Boston gentry, and, farcical enough, we gave great joy to them without knowing or intending it. For on that day - the day which gave being to our new army, but before the proclamation came to hand - we had hoisted the Union flag, in compliment to the united colonies. But, behold! it was received in Boston as a token of the deep impression the speech made upon us, and as a signal of submission. So we hear by a person out of Boston last night. By this time, I presume, they begin to think it strange that we have not made a formal surrender of our lines.”

The Annual Register of 1776 gives a more detailed description of the flag. It says, “So great was the rage and indignation [of the Americans] that they burned the speech and changed their colors from a plain red ground, which they had hitherto used, to a flag with thirteen stripes, as a symbol of the number and the union of the colonies.”

Previous to this, so-called “Union flags” were sometimes displayed, but were merely British standards with the legend “Liberty and Property,” or “Liberty and Union,” set upon the field as emblems of colonial rights and principles.

In 1855 the historian Benson J. Lossing discovered a contemporary colored drawing that for the first time rendered an authentic presentment of the flag. It was a sketch of the Royal Savage (Arnold’s flag vessel on Lake Champlain in the battle of October, 1776). An ensign was depicted flying at the mast-head. This flag displayed the British union - the combined crosses of St. George and St. Andrew - in the usual upper corner, but the field had been changed from the solid red into alternate stripes of red and white. It was doubtless the union jack in the corner of the flag hoisted at Cambridge that caused the English to misinterpret it - to suppose that the Americans intended to submit once more to the rule of George the Third.

The colonial Union flag of thirteen stripes was also displayed in Pennsylvania during the year. A letter describing the departure of the American fleet under Admiral Hopkins from Philadelphia, in February, says it sailed “amidst the acclamations of thousands assembled on the joyful occasion, under display of a Union flag, with thirteen stripes in the field, emblematical of the thirteen united colonies.”

After allegiance to the British crown had been thrown off, the jack bearing the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew became inappropriate, and on the 14th of June, 1777, the Continental Congress passed the following resolution:

Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white, on a blue field, representing a new constellation.

The illustration represents the ceremony of raising the new colonial flag. The scene depicts the interior of the fortifications on Prospect Hill, looking southeast across the Charles River toward Bartons Point in Boston.

The colonial troops, while much better organized than ever before, were still without a regular uniform, the occasional buckskin hunting dress of the Southern riflemen or of the frontiersmen being in picturesque contrast to the bucolic homespun of the New England minute-men.

Washington’s uniform is described in a letter written July 20, 1775, thus: “His dress is a blue coat with buff-colored facings, a rich epaulette on each shoulder, buff underdress, and an elegant small sword; a black cockade in his hat.”

Three of the cannon used at this time are now planted upon Cambridge’s common. They date from the reign of George the Second.

The profile of Boston, it may be said, has been rendered as carefully as possible from contemporary drawings and prints of the period. Edes & Gills North American for 1770 contains an engraving by Paul Revere, entitled “Landing of the Troops in Boston, 1768,” which gives an approximate view of that city, with its beacon, towers, and spires. Besides this, Lieutenant Williams of the Royal Welsh Fusileers, while stationed in Boston under General Gage, made a panoramic view in colors of the country surrounding the city. A copy of this drawing is in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The vessel in the middle distance represents one of the British war-ships guarding the approaches to the city.

Note: for some reason, when I first posted this I titled DeLand’s picture “Raising the First National Flag, January 1, 1776” but the correct title should be “Raising the First American Flag, January 1, 1776”.

An Interview About Howard Pyle

Last month, PCNTV aired an hour-long interview with Heather Campbell Coyle about Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered. And now you can watch it online. Ms. Coyle is Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum and she knows and understands Pyle like few others do, so by all means watch this in-depth conversation.

The Good, Aged Doctor

“The Good, Aged Doctor” by Howard Pyle (1899)

“The Good, Aged Doctor” - or, more precisely, “The good, aged Doctor, the appearance of whose rotund figure on the streets was the signal for the Parisians to doff their hats” - was one of four illustrations Howard Pyle made for James Barnes’s “The Man for the Hour” in McClure’s Magazine for December 1899.

Benjamin Franklin is, of course, “the good, aged doctor”; the street in Paris is most likely a particular one, but I haven’t yet figured out which.

Pyle probably painted this (and its three companions) in mid-1899, while conducting the Drexel Institute’s second Summer School of Illustration at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. I assume this only because his student and future sister-in-law, Ellen Bernard Thompson, made two pictures for this same article at that time. Pyle also probably showed his and Thompson’s pictures at an exhibition of work made by Pyle and by his class for various Christmas 1899 periodicals at the Drexel Institute January 15-26, 1900, and subsequently at Earle’s Galleries in Philadelphia.

I never really thought much of this image, perhaps because the black and white magazine reproduction (see below) flattens and sucks much of the life out of the complex composition. But the original 18.25 x 12.5" oil on board - which is primarily in black, white, and red (and maybe yellow, unless that’s old varnish), yet seems almost full-color - is quite lovely. It’s also for sale: after over a century in the hands of one family - which obtained it from Pyle himself, apparently - it’s going on the block Wednesday, December 12, 2012, at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago. That’s tomorrow!

P.S. The painting sold for $29,375.00 (including buyer’s premium).

“The Good, Aged Doctor” in McClure’s Magazine for December 1899

Ticket to Pyle

On December 4, 1903, Howard Pyle and his wife, Anne, traveled from Chicago to Indianapolis via the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway. They arrived at 2:40 p.m. and were met by Will David Howe, a professor of English at Butler College (and later an editor and publisher in New York). Howe had tried to get Pyle to come lecture in Indianapolis in 1902, but the ever-busy Pyle begged off, explaining:

I am not only writing a book [The Story of King Arthur and His Knights] and conducting a class and building a house, but I have so many other engagements ahead of me that I hardly know how I shall carry them. Besides I shall be able next season to give you a much better thought out discourse than I could possible build together this year.

So the plan went on hold until 1903, when Pyle was able to coordinate well-paying visits to both Indianapolis and Chicago in one week-long trip. At the Art Institute of Chicago, he lectured on “The Art of the Age,” met more informally with the instructors and students (including a 19-year-old Harvey Dunn, who would join Pyle’s school the following November), and attended the opening of a one-man-show of some 110 of his pictures.

“As my lecture in Chicago will be more directly addressed to artists it will probably have many practical suggestions which will be well to omit in your lecture,” Pyle informed Howe. “Accordingly I will both concentrate and condense my Chicago words for Indianapolis.”

Unfortunately, no manuscript or transcript “The Art of the Age” has yet turned up, but in describing an earlier version of it Pyle said that he had “endeavored...to explain my understanding of the difference between the Art of the past and the Art that is demanded by the present age.... [and] stated very clearly and concisely my opinion that our age and our times require an art that, if not distinctly different from the Art of the past, is, at least, an adaptation and completion of the art of the past to fit our present needs.”

At any rate, at 8:00 p.m. on December 4th, Pyle “spoke to a large audience in chapel hall at Butler College” - reported the Indianapolis Morning Star - under the auspices of (and, perhaps, restricted to members and guests of) the Irvington Athenaeum. The paper also noted that “Classes were dispensed with and a reception was given Mr. Pyle at the college residence.”

The next evening, Mr. and Mrs. Pyle left Indianapolis on a 6:50 p.m. train. “Our trip home was most comfortable and the six children welcomed us with open arms,” said Anne in a thank-you letter to Howe. And Pyle’s students may have been equally welcoming: “Mr. Pyle is in Chicago,” wrote N. C. Wyeth to his mother, right after the Pyles had embarked on their trip, “and we are left for a whole week to battle alone with our troubles, and when we feel blue we’ll have no kind and powerful guardian to come in and cheer us up.”

The Sad Story of a Little Boy That Cried

Today is the 149th birthday of Katharine Pyle, Howard Pyle’s sister.

These two siblings seem to have had a conflicted relationship over the years: Howard (who was ten years older) often tried to encourage or push Katharine into a more “practical” career path, but she was too much of an independent spirit, who did things when and where and how she wanted to. At least that’s the sense one might get from reading her unpublished recollections. Katharine may even have gotten a certain glee out of exasperating her much more “controlled” brother.

Yet, for all the focus on his career, Howard Pyle couldn’t recall when his work first appeared in print. He said - more than once - that it was “The Magic Pill” in Scribner’s Monthly for July 1876. But a drawing he made for his mother’s poem “The Reformer” had appeared eight months earlier - and five years before that he made the masthead drawing for the Wilmington newspaper Every Evening. Maybe, however, Pyle was only concerned with his first published words, not his pictures. At any rate, although he may not have remembered his first time in print, his sister remembered hers:

My first finished attempt at verse was one that was taken by the St. Nicholas, and published in the department of children’s writings. Howard made a picture to go with it, and was paid for it but I, of course, was not paid for the verses as they were just a child’s contribution and I was very much disappointed that I wasn’t. They were about a child who was always crying until in the end his mouth had stretched till -

One Morning no Jackie was anywheres found,
But only a great mouth that lay on the ground;

And so that was all that was left, alack!
A great big mouth with a border of Jack.

Katharine neglected to provide a date, but searching through the pages of St. Nicholas - and page 78 of “The Letter-Box” of the November 1880 issue, in particular - one will find:

THE SAD STORY OF A LITTLE BOY THAT CRIED

Once, a little boy, Jack, was, oh! ever so good,
Till he took a strange notion to cry all he could.

So he cried all the day, and he cried all the night,
He cried in the morning and in the twilight;

He cried till his voice was as hoarse as a crow,
And his mouth grew so large it looked like a great O.

It grew at the bottom, and grew at the top;
It grew till they thought that it never would stop.

Each day his great mouth grew taller and taller,
And his dear little self grew smaller and smaller.

At last, that same mouth grew so big that - alack! -
It was only a mouth with a border of Jack.

And so this was all that was left of poor Jack:
The great gaping mouth, like a wide-open sack!

P.K. [sic]

It should be noted, however, that no picture by Katharine’s brother - or anyone - accompanies the verse. Maybe Howard made one (and got paid, unlike his sister), or maybe he didn’t; it’s still a mystery.

But the real injury to Katharine was that somebody - the publisher, the typesetter, or the editors (who included Mary Mapes Dodge and Frank Stockton at the time) - reversed her initials from “K.P.” to “P.K.”, so she didn’t even get proper credit at the time - or maybe ever. That must have hurt. (Howard, by the way, suffered a similar indignity when his fable “The Fox and the Tablet” in St. Nicholas for April 1877 was credited to “P. Howard”.) So as a 149th birthday present I thought I’d finally give Katharine the credit she deserves.

A Typical Yankee Named Hoyt

“Jack Frost’s Harvest” by Philip L. Hoyt in Harper’s Weekly for December 6, 1902

In an article N. C. Wyeth wrote about Howard Pyle - published in the Christian Science Monitor one hundred years ago today - he discussed an unnamed Pyle student:

Mr. Pyle's inordinate ability as a teacher lay primarily in his sense of penetration; to read beneath the crude lines on paper the true purpose, to detect therein our real inclinations and impulses. In short, to unlock our personalities. This power was in no wise a superficial method handed out to those who would receive. We received in proportion to that which was fundamentally within us.

I recall an instance as an illustration. One member, an ungainly lad from the back country of northern New England, found his way into Pyle classes. He had dreamed, in his remote village, of becoming an artist; of picturing his visions of cities he had never seen, and of the lives of the people therein.

He had come into the composition class week after week, with sketches of society folk and kindred subjects. They were, naturally, unconvincing and poor, but Mr. Pyle’s interest in them did not flag. Meanwhile he assiduously gathered from the fellow accounts of his life in the woods, of breaking snow roads, of gathering maple sap, of log driving, of corn huskings, and a myriad things. It began to dawn upon the Vermonter that his own life at home, the incidents of his own north country which he knew and loved were interesting, yes, intensely interesting. His pictures at once gained in vitality and importance. With Mr. Pyle's trenchant help, he had found himself. I doubt if Howard Pyle ever had a student that did not at some time or other experience some such awakening as this while under his direction.

This “ungainly lad” was Philip Langly Hoyt, born November 2, 1873, in Wentworth, New Hampshire, a few miles from the Vermont border. The son of a farmer, Hoyt studied with Pyle at the Drexel Institute, won a scholarship to the 1899 Summer School of Illustration at Chadds Ford, and was selected by Pyle to join the nucleus of his own art school when he founded it in 1900.

Hoyt seems to have taken fellow New Englander Wyeth under his wing when the latter arrived in Wilmington in 1902. In an error-ridden letter home, Wyeth wrote of him:

The fellow is a typical Yankee named Hoyt. He’s from Vermont [sic]. Perfect Habits. Shrewd and as economical as possible.

I had to get an easle of course and Pyle could get a $25 one for 12.60. Hoyt says Don’t ye dew it! Make it. He made a slendid one for himself, lumber (hard pine), iron fixings and all cost four dollars or a little less. Now it’s quite a piece of mechanism and needs a cabinetmaker’s skill to make one so I bought his for five dollars and he’s making himself a new one making a few improvments (which is to his great delight).

Hoyt remained in Wilmington until about 1904 or so, when he moved to Boston. Eventually he abandoned illustration and although he may not have actually lived in Vermont prior to meeting Wyeth, Hoyt did wind up there later: on the 1930 Census he is listed as a construction contractor in Hartford in Windsor County. He died in Vermont at the age of 90 in March 1964.

Photograph taken in Chadds Ford, PA, showing Pyle and his students seeing off Philip Hoyt, on or about September 1, 1899, at the close of the second Summer School of Illustration. From left to right: Robert L. Mason, Emlem McConnell, Frank Schoonover, Howard Pyle, Annie Hailey, Sarah Stilwell, Ellen Bernard Thompson, Anna Whelan Betts, Stanley Arthurs, Philip Hoyt (in straw boater), Bertha Corson Day.

Howard Pyle, An Appreciation

HOWARD PYLE, AN APPRECIATION
by Henry M. Alden

Howard Pyle, whose sudden death at Florence, Italy, November 9th, it is our painful office to record, had been for more than thirty years intimately associated, both as author and artist, with the periodical publications of Harper & Brothers - in later years more especially with their Magazine, though his earliest triumphs were won in Harper’s Weekly. The news of his death will bring sorrow to the hearts of all our readers. He has passed away at the very height of his career and in the prime of his manhood, while absorbed in the prosecution of a work which engaged his most ardent enthusiasm and the most distinctive qualities of his genius. He had been abroad since the summer [sic fall] of 1910. It was his first visit to Europe. And he was in Italy - the home of poetry and song, the treasure-house of all the arts! But his quest was not for the old masters. He sought for something older than any art-gallery or academic haunt could yield, something more native and elemental, lodged in the hearts and forever embodied in the idiomatic speech of the people.

Before he went abroad Pyle had sought this kind of treasure at home, in out-of-the-way places, in the Peninsular Canaan of the Eastern Shore, in old Dunkard and Quaker settlements, in the haunts and legends of pirates and buccaneers; and when the contemporary environment failed him he had recourse to history, reverting to Colonial annals, to the England of the Roundheads, and even back to those Arthurian legends upon which he loved to dwell.

This peculiarity set Pyle apart from all the other eminent artists of his time, and it was this mainly that made him an author. He loved to tell a quaint and antique tale as well as to picture it. Abbey found delight in knightly legend, but nothing could have persuaded him even to associate it with literature. Nothing could have kept Pyle from bringing speech into company with his colors. Thus the whole form and scheme of art was conceived differently by these men.

We see then clearly why Pyle, after his technical art-training, did not look to London or Paris for his inspiration. For his purpose he did not need them. He achieved rare technical distinction. His color-sense was a native possession, but it was, in the course of his career, developed to exquisite perfection. No artist has surpassed him in the application of this sense to the process of color-reproduction in magazine illustration.

Creative imagination of a peculiarly original sort characterized all of Pyle’s work, both as artist and as writer. He was not literary in his writing any more than he was academic in his art. But there was always the subjective prompting, however clear and bold the projection. He was spiritually allied to Swedenborg. No adventure attracted him unless it was an adventure of the soul - never subtle, always elemental, and according to a man’s nature, and therefore often evil. This was as apparent in his early stories as in his current Italian folk-lore tales. Perhaps his subjective disposition, in this peculiarity of it, is disclosed best by contrast with artists who, like Remington, loved adventure for its own sake - tough fighting, military combats, pioneer roughing, bronco-busting, and the like - the wholly external thing. We could hardly think of Pyle as an expert war correspondent.

We have lost not only a great artist and a great imaginative writer, but a great soul.

[First published in Harper’s Weekly for November 18, 1911]

How Are We Going to Vote This Year?

“Whither?” by Howard Pyle (1904)

...Now the fate of the nation lies with us voters to determine.

It does not lie with the Republican Candidate nor with the Democratic Candidate. They are our servants and only do our bidding when we elect them to office.

The VOTER must decide which of these two parties to put in power, and he alone.

He is the sovereign, and upon him lies the entire responsibility of that decision. So we had better take care what we are about when we cast our ballot. Don’t let us be too quick about it; let us take time to think!...

So how are we going to vote this year? THAT is the question!

—From “How Are We Going To Vote This Year?” by Howard Pyle, published anonymously in Collier’s Weekly for November 5, 1904 (and subsequently reprinted in various newspapers). Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “I think it is as good a thing as we have had in this campaign, and I want to thank you for it with all my heart.” And journalist Richard Victor Oulahan later remarked, “I have been told that the cartoon entitled ‘Whither?’ with the accompanying reading matter entitled ‘How Are We Going to Vote This Year?’ was more effective as a campaign advertisement than anything else put out in behalf of President Roosevelt by the Literary Bureau of the National Committee.”

Howard Pyle’s Sphynx

Howard Pyle made the illustration shown here for William Dean Howells’ “Stops of Various Quills” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for December 1894; it appeared in the book of the same name, which Harper & Brothers published - and which Pyle illustrated in full - the following fall. On October 30, 1895, Pyle wrote to Howells:

I am very proud of our book, a half dozen copies of which Harpers have just sent me. I arranged with them to return the picture of the Sphynx. I remember you expressed yourself as liking it rather much, and so, I think, as you inspired the picture, it should be yours. Accordingly I shall have it framed tomorrow and send it on to you as some token of the pleasure I had in illustrating your poems.

Then on November 3, 1895, Pyle wrote again:

I sent you yesterday, by express, my picture of the Sphynx which I want you to keep for my sake.

It seemed to me that, in your poems, the piping Pan of your soul went up into just such twilight altitudes as I have tried to depict; and hearing the sudden dim rustle of wings, turned so to see his Sphynx crouching where she had not been before. 

I want you to have the picture for that reason too.

Howells later mentioned the painting in a July 9, 1903, letter to Pyle: “I have turned a barn into a library here” - in Kittery Point, Maine - “and I wish you could see how I have placed that rich gift of yours...”

I doubt Pyle ever saw it, though. And I’ve been trying to find a photo of the painting hanging on the wall there, but so far I’ve come up short. However, I did find a snippet from the Mark Twain Quarterly (or Journal) of 1936, which says of Howells:

He stood benignly before a painting by his friend, Howard Pyle, who had given him the original of a famous book-illustration. He was as proud as a child to have on his study wall a painting by this artist.

N. C. Wyeth Meets Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle, photographed  by Arthur Ernst Becher in 1902

According to David Michaelis’ N. C. Wyeth: A Biography  it was 110 years ago today - October 25, 1902 - that Wyeth met Howard Pyle for the first time. Although Wyeth later convinced himself that the meeting happened on his 20th birthday (October 19th), his memory of it stuck with him. In an article he wrote for Christian Science Monitor of November 13, 1912 - just a year after Pyle's death - he described it this way:

A great stick of hickory is smoldering and gleaming fitfully in the fireplace before me. Its pungent fragrance scents the room. My pulse quickens to the magic aroma, and my thought flies back to a day in October 12 [sic 10] years ago when I first set eyes on Howard Pyle. He was standing, tall, broad and impressive, legs apart, hands clasped behind him, backed against another such open fire in his studio. The smell of burning hickory was in the air!

I had come to him, as many had before me, for his help and guidance, and his first words to me will forever ring in my ears as a vital symbol of his teaching and an unceasing appeal to my conscience.

“My boy, you have come here for help. If so, you are here to live your best, and to work hard!” His broad, kindly face looked solemn behind those words, and from that moment I knew that he meant infinitely more to me than a mere teacher of illustration. It was this commanding spirit of earnestness, and of love, that made his leadership distinctive, and which has perpetuated in the hearts of all his pupils a deep affection kindred to that which one holds toward his own parents....

In subsequent years, when asked to write about his teacher, Wyeth returned to this particular memory several times. Compare, for instance, the 1912 passage with this one from his introduction to Howard Pyle: A Chronicle of 1925:

A great stick of hickory is smoldering and gleaming in the fireplace before me. Its pungent fragrance scents the room. My pulse quickens to the magic aroma and my thought flies back to a day in October, eighteen [sic 23] years ago, when I first saw Howard Pyle. He was standing, tall, broad and impressive, legs apart, hands clasped behind him, backed against another such open fire in his studio. The smell of burning hickory was in the air.

I had come to him, as many had before me, for his help and guidance, and his first words to me will forever ring in my ears as an unceasing appeal to my conscience: “My boy, you have come here for help. Then you must live your best and work hard!” His broad, kindly face looked solemn as he spoke these words, and from that moment I knew that he meant infinitely more to me than a mere teacher of illustration. It was this commanding spirit of earnestness and of love that made his leadership distinctive, and which has perpetuated in the hearts of all his pupils a deep affection akin to that which one holds toward his own parents....

It’s remarkably similar, as are two other known variants of 1921 and 1925. But when Wyeth was asked to contribute an introduction (and a color frontispiece) to the “Brandywine Edition” of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood in 1933 (which also featured illustrations by his teenaged son Andy) he expanded on his earlier reminiscences, infusing them with much more myth and magic. In many ways Wyeth’s words reflect the best of Pyle’s own prose, so here’s the bulk of them, in honor of the 110th anniversary:

My most vivid recollection of Howard Pyle was gained during the first five minutes I knew him. He stood with his back to the blazing and crackling logs in his studio fireplace, his legs spaced apart, his arms akimbo. His towering figure seemed to lift to greater heights with the swiftly ascending smoke and sparks from the hearth behind him.

It happened on one of those blue and gold days in October. The air was sharp and keen. Moreover, it was my birthday [sic]. I was young, ambitious and impressionable. For years, it seemed, I had dreamed of this meeting. Success in winning this master’s interest and sympathy to the cause of my own artistic advancement seemed so much to ask, so remote, such a vain hope. But here I was at last, seated before him in the very room in which were born so many of the pictures I had breathlessly admired from boyhood. Paintings and drawings that had long since become a living and indispensable part of my own life.

And as Howard Pyle stood there, talking gently but with unmistakable emphasis, his large and genial countenance hypnotized me. The mobile mask of his face became more than individual. My rapid reflections were swept beyond the actual man. It was bewildering. I heard every modulation of his voice and I took note of his every word. Occasionally I would answer a question. I remember all this clearly. But a searching beyond his countenance persisted.

The soft top-light from the glass roof high above us poured down like a magical and illuminated mist over his magnificent head. The forehead was broad, spatial, and not too high, the frontal processes accented the shadowed caverns of the large and wide-set eyes. The well-defined brows were tremulously sensitive. Lifting toward the centre they would become ineffably wistful, then quickly dropping to a level line across the eyes the entire countenance became majestically severe, forceful, unrelenting. The recollection of the masks of Beethoven, Washington, Goethe, Keats, passed in swift succession before my vision and in a sudden grasp of the truth I realized that the artist’s face before me was actually a living composite of the men of history and romance which he had so magically and dramatically perpetuated on canvas. It was as though there existed a definite and precise genealogical tie between this living, pulsating countenance before me and the thrilling pictures of the men he had created whether of General Washington, Captain Kidd, Aaron Burr, Robin Hood, Sir Launcelot or numberless others. In a sudden relaxation of expression, certain curves and areas of the face would vividly suggest the soft mobility of Washington's features or the wise serenity of Franklin, or, perhaps, the nervous shrewdness of Jefferson.

In retrospect, and consequently with a better understanding of the processes of creative art, I have come to realize that power and conviction in dramatic expression (which is so salient a virtue in illustrative painting) lie fundamentally in its autobiographical nature - that, in each of us is something of everybody; if we but know, as artists, how to uncover and use it. Howard Pyle accomplished just this to startling degree as a phenomenal pictorial record he left testifies....

N. C. Wyeth, c.1903-04, via http://www.ncwyeth.org