Howard Pyle’s Birthplace: A Crack in the Case

Two years ago I talked about why I believed that Howard Pyle was born in a house on Market Street, between Eighth and Ninth Streets, in Wilmington, Delaware. You can read about it and see some pictures here. Yesterday, a new piece of evidence - which seems to support my theory - caught my eye:
 

The most intriguing thing about this is that it was written by Pyle’s sister, Katharine. It appeared in her syndicated history, “The Story of Delaware,” in the magazine section of The Sunday Morning Star - a.k.a. The Delmarva Star - on November 9, 1924.

Although there are some problems with the piece (particularly with some of the dates), I’m inclined to take her statement - “Howard Pyle was born in an old house on Market street in Wilmington” - at its word. And, despite its flaws, this brief biography of her brother - with whom she had a somewhat conflicted relationship - is worth reading, so I’ve quoted it in full, below.

Of course, Katharine Pyle was no mean artist and writer herself, and she’s presently the focus of an extensive exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum.

THE STORY OF DELAWARE
by Katharine Pyle

Conclusion of Chapter on “Famous Men”

HOWARD PYLE
1853-1912 [sic 1911]

Howard Pyle was born in an old house on Market street in Wilmington, and it was in Wilmington the greater part of his life was spent.

Even as a child he showed a talent for drawing. The blank places and margins in his school books were filled with sketches, the most of them made in hours when he was supposed to be studying.

At eighteen [sic sixteen] he was sent to an art school in Philadelphia and a few years later he set off for New York to seek his fortune.

He was ambitious to support himself, and after he once began to earn money he made up his mind that he would not ask his father for further help. At times he had scarcely enough money to buy art materials or pay for his models, but he held to his determination, and before long his name became known as a rising illustrator. Publishers spoke of him as one of the most promising among the younger artists.

In 1878 [sic 1879] he came back to Wilmington to live and soon after he married. Already his reputation as an artist had been made, but his fame as a writer came later. He had written quite a number of verses and short stories but his book of “Robin Hood” was the beginning of his real reputation in that line. As years went on still other books were written, - “The Wonder Clock.” “Otts [sic Otto] of the Silver Hand,” “The Garden Behind the Moon,” “Twilight Land” and others. The last of all was the King Arthur Series. All these are now child classics and are rich in illustrations done by his own hand.

Some of his tales were dictated to his stenographer as he stood at his easel painting, but he found this double work wearisome after a time, and in his later years he never attempted it.

He loved to have someone read to him as he drew or painted. Hour after hour was spent by his stenographer in reading about tales of pirates or adventure: or perhaps she read to him one of Trollope’s novels, or a book of Swedenborg, for he was of the Swedenborgian religion, and the influence of his belief was shown, not only in his life, but in his pictures and writings as well.

His work hours were long. They did not always end with the daylight. Sometimes he worked at home in the evenings over some delicate bit of pen-and-ink or a wash drawing while his wife read to him.

Besides his illustrating and writing he did a number of mural decorations.

The amount of work he turned out was enormous; in all he produced over three thousand pictures and decorations.

In 1893 [sic 1894] he was asked to teach a class in illustration at the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia. It was the first class of its kind in this country and proved a great success.

Out of it grew Mr. Pyle’s Summer School at Chadd’s Ford.

Later he gave up his classes at the Drexel. He built studios about his own for some of his students; and others who had followed him to Wilmington for the sake of his teaching, rented rooms or buildings near by.

Many of the men and women who studied under him in those years are among the most famous illustrators of the day.

In 1911 [sic 1910] Mr. Pyle set sail with his family, intending to spend a year or more abroad. But from this journey he never returned. He died in Florence the following year.

Since then a great number of his pictures have been bought by the people of Wilmington. A society called “The Fine Arts Society of Wilmington” [sic The Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts] was formed with the express purpose of keeping them together, caring for them and exhibiting them at certain times.

Now a special room in the Wilmington Public Library has been built for them, and there they have been hung and can be seen any time. It is probably the largest collection there is of any one man’s work, and it stands as a greater memorial to the art of Howard Pyle than the most imposing monument that could have been built.

A Howard Pyle Tiffany Window

In 1893, Howard Pyle designed a stained-glass window which was to be fabricated by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company.

“Designed” might not be the precise word: Pyle didn’t so much design the window as paint a picture that was, in essence, “translated” by Tiffany’s stained-glass artisans.

The window was destined for - and, presumably, commissioned by - the Colonial Club of New York, which had moved into a handsome new building on Broadway and 72nd Street the previous year. The subject was Anthony Van Corlaer, and the work has generally been known by the title “Antony Van Corlear [sic], the Trumpeter of New Amsterdam”. Then again, it could be argued that the “official” title is that which Pyle lettered on the work itself:

ANTONIVS VAN CORLEARVS TVBIC
EN PRO NOVELLO AMSTERDAMO

(That title might not be too reliable, however: “My Latin is very loose,” Pyle later wrote (in reference to a mistake in the first printing of his Story of King Arthur), “and I am afraid that I always depend too much on the text reader to help me with that - as well as with my dreadful spelling.”)

At any rate, Pyle seems to have been proud of his painting: on March 18, 1893 he welcomed invited guests to his Wilmington studio to take a look at it before it was shipped off. It was subsequently shown at the Tiffany studios, 333 Fourth Avenue, New York, February 25-26, 1897, and at the First Annual Exhibition of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, May 2-31, 1898.

But the painting has since gone missing. We can take a look at it, however, courtesy of an article on “Window Making as an Art” by William H. Thomas in The Munsey Magazine for December 1901.

Granted, it’s in black and white, but at least we can see the general scheme - not to mention a great many of the painterly details that were “lost in translation” - perhaps because they were deemed unnecessary or impossible to replicate in glass. (Note, for instance, Pyle’s rendering of the boots.)

The window was completed and installed in a Colonial Club stairway sometime that year or the next. The American Architect and Building News for December 29, 1894 described it thus:

At the head of the first flight is a Tiffany window, quite expressive of the Club - Antony Van Corlear sits jovial, surrounded by laughing maidens, who fill his glass and flatter his bachelor vanity, while in the tablets on either side we read the tale, as set forth in the “Knickerbocker’s History”:

“But it was a moving sight
To see ye buxom lasses;
How they hung about ye Doughty
Antony Van Corlear;
For he was a jolly rosy-faced
Lusty bachelor
Fond of his joke and withal
A desperate rogue among ye women!”

A humorous and pleasing thing to greet one on entering the Club!

But in 1903 the clubhouse went into foreclosure and over the next century the building underwent a series of modifications and renovations before ultimately being demolished in 2007.

Fortunately, the window weathered these storms: somewhere along the line it was removed and on March 30, 1984 it was auctioned by Christie’s in New York and purchased by the Delaware Art Museum. It measures 65.5 x 39.5 inches, and Pyle’s painting most likely is - or was - of similar dimensions. Maybe it weathered some storms, too, and will show up one day.

“Come, come, your Future Majesty! Cheer up!”

Another long-lost Howard Pyle painting is about to go on the block at Scottsdale Art Auction on March 31, 2012. It’s Lot 322.

“Come, come, your Future Majesty! Cheer up!” illustrated “Eden-Gates” by Justus Miles Forman in Harper’s Monthly Magazine for March 1905. And then it went missing - until now. As far as I know, Pyle never exhibited this 24 x 16" oil on canvas. It’s a nicely painted piece: I particularly appreciate his handling of the tapestry (and wonder if he based it on something in particular) and the carpet - not to mention the paneling, the carved chair, and even the table’s claw-foot that peeks out from under the drooping table cloth. All so loosely painted, but dead on.

The monk (Brother Aurelius), by the way, bears an uncanny resemblance to Pyle’s student Harvey Dunn. This might be coincidental, however, since Dunn only arrived in Wilmington the previous fall - though he is known to have posed for Pyle not long after joining the school. For comparison, here’s Dunn as a much older man via Picture It: Observations, Inspiration and Lessons about Illustration Art.

Anniversary Song

I have no idea what this sounded like, but it was written and sung by Howard Pyle’s students at his 50th birthday banquet on March 5, 1903:

ANNIVERSARY SONG

Here's to the friend whom we all hold dear,
May he live long.
Give him a cheer for his golden year,
Sing him a song.
Here's to the friends who are his true friends,
Honest and firm and true.

Sing it again, boys, sing it again, boys,

Louder -

CHORUS: - Palms of victory, palms of glory,
Palms of victory he has won.
Palms of victory, palms of glory,
Palms of victory he has won.

Here's to the work of the future years,
Always the best.
Here's to the men he has gathered here
From east and west.
May the seed of his work remain,
Honest and firm and true.

Sing it again, boys, sing it again, boys,

Louder -

CHORUS: - Palms of victory, palms of glory,
Palms of victory he has won.
Palms of victory, palms of glory,
Palms of victory he has won.

Belated Birthday Wishes

A happy birthday to Howard Pyle, born 159 years ago today in Wilmington, Delaware. (And I still think it happened at 224 Market Street.)

“Can’t you see ’em twicet?”

“Macarooned” “Marooned” by Howard Pyle (1909)

The Delaware Art Museum’s lovely, landmark show, Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered, closes today. Fortunately, it will reappear this June at the Norman Rockwell Museum.

One hundred years ago this month, in March 1912, an exhibition featuring many of the same pictures was mounted by The Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, which had been formed in direct response to Pyle’s death the previous November. That show, held in the ballroom of the Hotel du Pont on Market Street, stayed up for only a couple of days, but it was a tremendous hit. “GREAT CROWDS VIEW PICTURES,” said one newspaper. “About 10,000 Saw the Howard Pyle Art Collection During Yesterday. MANY COULD NOT GET IN.”

An article about the show later appeared in The Outlook for June 1, 1912. Although unsigned, rumor has it that Pyle’s student Ethel Pennewill Brown was the author (a.k.a. “The Spectator”). And I'm going to quote it in full, here, since it so well describes the universal enthusiasm that Pyle’s work could generate - and can still generate, when given the chance.

*****************

THE SPECTATOR

Both entrance halls of the big office building, running in from two streets, were jammed with people - every kind of people, from white-haired men to infants in arms. The three elevators were plying as fast as they could to the eleventh floor, but the crowd thronged in far too fast for them to handle. “And it’s only beginning,” said the attendant in charge. “You ought to have seen them yesterday evening at about nine o’clock! It's only a quarter of eight now, and it’ll get worse from now on.” The Spectator was glad he had arrived early. Also, he was glad to see that for once a prophet was honored in his own country; for the swift shuttles of the elevators were taking up all Wilmington to look at the collection of pictures by Howard Pyle, the artist who had lived all his life in the busy manufacturing city of the Diamond State.

----

Never was there a better citizen than Howard Pyle, or a better friend. Therefore a group of his friends had organized this exhibit of all the pictures that he had left, that the whole city might see them, and that, if possible, they might be secured as a nucleus for an art gallery for the town. It was thus not an ordinary picture show, but a peculiarly personal and popular one. The Spectator, who counts the remembrance of Howard Pyle’s friendship as one of the privileges of life, met at the very door of the big ball-room on the top floor, where the show was held, others of an intimate circle who were serving as ushers and explaining the pictures to those who asked for information. “I’ve been taking small boys around all day,” one woman said, smiling, “and it’s been such fun! They want to know all about! ‘The Taking of Cartagena,’ and ‘The Flying Dutchman,’ and ‘The Battle of Germantown,’ and ‘Bunker Hill,’ and ‘The Salem Wolf,’ and ‘The Triumph of War,’ and ‘Thomas Jefferson.’ History isn’t my strong point, and several of them have corrected me. Not one boy has been troublesome or mischievous, and yet some of them have been regular little street boys - colored ones, too, among them. I shall never again think that art doesn’t interest the masses. Why,” to a nine-year-old, ragged and tousled, who came marching in with two younger boys tagging on to him, “haven’t you been here to-day already?”

----

“Yes, lady,” said the boy, shyly. “But I'd like to see ’em again, and here’s Joe hasn’t seen ’em yet, nor his brother. Can't you see ’em twicet?”

“Of course you can,” said the usher. “Which one do you like the best, out of them all?”

The urchin hesitated not a second. “That feller on the ship in the storm,” he said, pointing to the Flying Dutchman staggering on the slanting, streaming, gale-swept deck. The crowd was already three deep before it, but the little fellows wormed their way in and stood hand in hand gazing at the canvas. “I don’t suppose they have ever had a chance to see a good painting before in their lives,” said the usher. “That’s the interesting thing - to see the people here that one would never think would care for pictures or come. But they do come; there were six thousand here yesterday, and we didn’t expect five hundred! We’ve had four infants in arms, and three pet dogs, and several people on crutches, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some one come in on a stretcher rather than miss it!”

----

And still they came. A solid wave flowed into the wide door of the high-arched ball-room, so that soon the committee had to stand there and direct the people to “Keep to the left, and move on all the time, please.” White-haired men and women, young couples bringing the baby, high school girls and boys, fashionably dressed women, laboring men, city officials, Poles, Italians, Negroes, Russian Jews, sisters of charity, deaconesses, leading clergymen, shopgirls, saloon and sporting men, art students, and boys, and more boys - a whole community, in fact, was surging up from the street to see the work of a beloved citizen as well as a famous artist. It was what America’s greatest illustrator would have loved to see - the human impulse, the response of the people to an art that reached them. For they did not glance at the pictures and pass on. They did not stand, as at the usual cultivated “private view,” with their backs to the pictures and talk to each other. They moved along slowly, so slowly that they had to be fairly torn away from picture after picture by the hovering committee. The crowded line, five and six deep, all around the spacious hall wanted to see every picture, and stay a while before this and that especially appealing one.

----

It was a fine group of canvases - full of color and fire and imagination. Howard Pyle’s Quaker blood made him a mystic, and also, by a paradox, sent him headlong on the trail of adventure and romance. His last picture - brought back from Florence unfinished and unsigned - was here: a heaving sea of iridescent blue and green, a cold moon, and slippery rocks, from which a mermaid siren, glittering, mysterious, alluring, winding her white arms about the young fisher-lad, was dragging him down, down, into the deadly depths below the white lacing foam. Across the room, in all the glory of a mellow sunset, the marooned pirate, crouched on the island sands, his head sunk on his hands, sat desolate while the screaming sea-birds wheeled overhead. Revolutionary scenes, mediaeval legends, colonial lovers and witches and sailors, bearded pirates dividing the spoils of cities or grappling treasure galleons, drew the eye and stirred the imagination. Exquisite black-and-white filled panel after panel, bold, minute, fascinating to linger over. The variety, the vigor, and the charm of the work were amazing.

----

“We didn’t have a catalogue, or put a rope railing in, because it was only for two days, and we never dreamed the whole town would come,” explained one of the committee. “We thought a few hundred, especially interested, would come and see what was here, and that a sentiment could be created for buying the collection. There are ninety-nine oils here, and then the black-and-whites and a few water-colors. Outside of the large mural paintings done for various public buildings in other States, these fairly represent the artist’s best work, and they are all in the market. If the little Italian towns of long ago could hold on to the pictures of their local artists, and so come to have galleries that travelers visit in thousands every year, there is no reason why American towns to-day should not begin to do the same thing. We are trying for a new free library building for Wilmington, and we want an art gallery in connection with it, with these for a nucleus. This crowd looks as if public sentiment will be running strong our way.”

----

It did indeed look so. The ushers at the door were fairly overwhelmed, and at last the order was given for the elevators to cease running. It was reported from below that the crowd was standing out in the street. The crush was now pressing the people fairly against the pictures, so it seemed better to let them wait in the street than come up and endanger the canvases. “Oh, dear, look at that woman’s hat-pin!” cried a watchful usher. “Won’t you please, Mr. Brown, go over there and call to her either to take out her hat-pin or keep her head slanted away from the canvas?” Mr. Brown obligingly pushed over, and the colored girl, whose enormous hat was pierced by a steel skewer with some six projecting inches of bare steel, giggled and threw her head far on the required slant, thereby knocking a meek and inoffensive man out of his place, but saving the pictures.

----

“We had the name, on a typewritten slip, pasted on the frame of each picture,” the Spectator was told. “But the crowd got so close to read the names that, we were afraid some of the near-sighted people would injure the canvas, and we took them all off. So the public can call them what they please. That wonderful one of the pirate abandoned on the island of the Spanish Main - ‘Marooned’ - is a great favorite. But many have called it ‘Macarooned,’ and enjoyed it just as much. Several men have come up and asked, ‘Which is the most expensive picture, please?’ One girl wanted to know ‘if the artist had a right to sign a picture with ships in it and call it an original picture, when he had the ships right there to draw from?’ Half a dozen school-children are going to write compositions about their favorite pictures. It seems to me that I never have thought of art as a thing that is alive and means something to all kinds of people, as I have these two days.”

----

The Spectator felt that way that night, too. He stayed to the end - until the lights were turned low so as to get the people to leave. They tramped off to the descending elevators - tired-looking men and women with another day’s work ahead of them, sleepy boys who still wanted to take another look at “Bunker Hill,” or “Thomas Jefferson,” or “The Mermaid,” or “The Pilgrimage of Truth,” or “The Burning Galleon,” or “The Taking of Cartagena.” Ten thousand of them had seen the pictures that day, in addition to the six thousand the day before - about one-fifth of the entire population, young and old. And yet some people think there is no future for American art! The Spectator is sure, after seeing that demonstration, that Wilmington will get its art gallery, and that the pictures of Howard Pyle will be a proud and prized community possession for all time in the old city where the Quaker artist was so beloved a citizen.

Howard Pyle on Augustus Saint-Gaudens

As early as 1880, Augustus Saint-Gaudens sought the 27-year-old Howard Pyle’s advice on the proper costume for his statue of Robert Richard Randall...

Years later, in a letter of February 23, 1898, to Saint-Gaudens’ wife, Augusta, Pyle said:

Indeed, my dear madam, you greatly magnify my work by comparing it as you do with that of Mr Saint Gaudens. I do - I believe - the best that I am able, but I am very conscious that my best falls far, far short of his.

But I’ve always felt that that the Saimt-Gaudens’ work was, in many ways, the three-dimensional embodiment of Pyle’s. Apart from attention to historical details, etc., they share a certain “solidity of form”, for want of a better description.

Howells on Pyle on Art

This little exchange between W. D. Howells and his (unnamed) friend Howard Pyle appeared in Howells’ “Life and Letters” column in Harper’s Weekly for March 21, 1896, and was reprinted with the title “The What and the How in Art” in Howells’ book Literature and Life (Harper & Brothers, 1902):

Not long ago I was talking about pictures with a painter, a very great painter, to my thinking; one whose pieces give me the same feeling I have from reading poetry; and I was excusing myself to him with respect to art, and perhaps putting on a little more modesty than I felt. I said that I could enjoy pictures only on the literary side, and could get no answer from my soul to those excellences of handling and execution which seemed chiefly to interest painters. He replied that it was a confession of weakness in a painter if he appealed merely or mainly to technical knowledge in the spectator; that he narrowed his field and dwarfed his work by it; and that if he painted for painters merely, or for the connoisseurs of painting, he was denying his office, which was to say something clear and appreciable to all sorts of men in the terms of art. He even insisted that a picture ought to tell a story.

Pyle on Dickens

“I do not mean to belittle Dickens but do you not think that the self-sacrifice of the hero in - Little Doret [sic] is it - is just a little cheap and tawdry? Do you not think that ‘Little Nell’ is just a trifle over-sentimental?”

Howard Pyle to Frank W. Hoyt, February 27, 1892

Ye Pirate Bold (and Bloody Expensive)

On September 13, 1903, Howard Pyle jotted down this drawing in a little notebook belonging to his student Thornton Oakley. Some years later, when Merle Johnson was compiling Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, Oakley allowed it to be reproduced.

Today, this 5.75 x 3.25" scrap was auctioned off at Freeman’s in Philadelphia. And as a testament to the enduring allure of Pyle’s pirates, it sold - with buyer’s premium - for $20,000!

Insert your favorite piratical expression of shock here.

Yes, Mr. Pyle, but...

“After all, it is the result of my words that will tell, and not the words themselves. If I may help and inspire young artists with an exalted idea of their mission, and if an improvement of their work is the result, then I shall have served my mission, and it will not matter in the least whether my words are recorded or not recorded.”

Howard Pyle to Marie-Marguerite Frechette, February 2, 1905.

“Myles, as in a dream, kneeled, and presented the letter”

“Myles, as in a dream, kneeled, and presented the letter” illustrates the following passage from the second installment of Howard Pyle’s novel Men of Iron in Harper's Young People for January 27, 1891:

[The Earl of Mackworth] was a tall man, taller even than Myles’s father. He had a thin face, deep-set bushy eyebrows, and a hawk nose. His upper lip was clean shaven, but from his chin a flowing beard of iron-gray hung nearly to his waist. He was clad in a riding-gown of black velvet that hung a little lower than the knee, trimmed with otter fur and embroidered with silver goshawks - the crest of the family of Beaumont.

A light shirt of link mail showed beneath the gown as he walked, and a pair of soft undressed leather riding-boots were laced as high as the knee, protecting his scarlet hose from mud and dirt. Over his shoulders he wore a collar of enamelled gold, from which hung a magnificent jewelled pendant, and upon his fist he carried a beautiful Iceland falcon.

As Myles stood staring, he suddenly heard Gascoyne’s voice whisper in his ear, “Yon is my Lord; go forward and give him thy letter.”

Scarcely knowing what he did, he walked towards the Earl like a machine, his heart pounding within him and a great humming in his ears. As he drew near, the nobleman stopped for a moment and stared at him, and Myles, as in a dream, kneeled, and presented the letter.

Pyle’s devoted student Thornton Oakley bought the original black and white oil painting (7.75 x 10.5" - done in Summer or Fall of 1890) from Herb Roth for $42.00! It now lives at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

This one - like a few others from the novel - makes me ache. Is it the almost photographic “presence”? The deceptively simple composition? The grouping of figures, tones, textures? Pyle is lauded for his scenes of dramatic action, but time and again I’m more affected by his scenes of dramatic inaction.

“Some Took His Time”

“Some took his time” by Howard Pyle is an illustration for “How the Old Horse Won the Bet” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which formed part of The One Hoss Shay With its Companion Poems, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. in 1905.

For this project, the publisher supplied Pyle with proofs - printed on Bristol board - of the illustrations he had made for the 1891 edition of the book, which Pyle then “colorized” with watercolors.

“The Good Old Doctor”

Howard Pyle illustrated two books by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes for the 1891 and 1892 holiday seasons, so it was only natural that the publisher, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., would want him to illustrate the one slated for 1893.

Pyle, though, had second thoughts: this was around the time he declared that he “intended to do no book illustrations, except in connection with [his] own writings.” But Art Editor Winthrop Scudder - who was also Pyle’s close friend - urged him to take on the project. In a letter of January 24, 1893, Scudder wrote:

You are probably aware that in our plans for the coming year the Autocrat has taken the first place. In other words, this is our leading book. If it is not illustrated by you I fear it will have to take a much less prominent place in the line. You are in such perfect sympathy with Dr. Holmes, not only on his literary side, but on the humorous as well, that I have felt from the beginning that your work on this book would give you a great deal of pleasure, delight the good old doctor, and satisfy the general public, who are so well acquainted with the Autocrat.

Despite his reservations, Pyle accepted - and wound up doing 59 illustrations for the two-volume set, including 15 full-page paintings (such as this and this). Two of the latter group which haven’t gotten much attention are the portraits of Dr. Holmes shown here. Both have a distinctly (and no doubt deliberately) photographic look, and although Pyle didn’t make exact copies of photos, he did indeed adapt some. Like this daguerreotype:

And since this daguerreotype (like most) produced a mirror image of its subject, Pyle wisely reversed Dr. Holmes in his painting:

“Mr. Leuba”

“Mr. Leuba” by Howard Pyle (1890)
Poor “Mr. Leuba” - he didn’t go far. He appeared in James Lane Allen’s “Flute and Violin” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for December 1890, but when the Howard Pyle-illustrated story came out in book form the following May, he was nowhere to be seen.

Well, not exactly. In one of the other illustrations - “It was a very gay dinner” - which did appear in both the magazine and the book, Mr. Leuba is seated in the background - with almost exactly the same pose and expression as in his “portrait”...

“It was a very gay dinner” by Howard Pyle (1890)

 The scan of “Mr. Leuba” was made from Pyle’s original ink on bristol board - 2 3/8 x 2 1/2" on a 7 1/4 x 8 15/16" sheet - and it’s possible to see some pencil marks where he loosely sketched in his drawing and how he scratched out the highlights in Leuba’s eyes.

“I think it a very capital story and am sure it will be a pleasant one to illustrate,” Pyle had said after reading the manuscript. But he ran into trouble. “Slight as the drawings are, I have had very ill-luck with them, having done most of them over once or twice, if not more times,” he wrote on June 7, 1890. “I would like to make the ultimate result as satisfactory as possible.”

The nervous pen-work is typical of Pyle’s transitional period, when he broke away from the slower, controlled style of The Wonder Clock (1887) and Otto of the Silver Hand (1888) and adopted the more scratchy method seen in The One Hoss Shay (1891).

Howard Pyle’s Drawing Desk

While sitting, tethered to my drawing table pretty constantly for three months, I often wondered what it would be like to stand and draw. That’s what Howard Pyle did, sometimes. Legend has it that he even had a drawing desk custom-made at just the right height so that he could comfortably draw - or write - standing up.

I had pictured it being like an old fashioned, four-legged schoolmaster’s desk, until I finally laid eyes on it (for the first time, I think) this past fall at the Delaware Art Museum. It’s really more of a lectern (or rostrum, or shtender) and it’s not “Early American” at all. And now I wonder if Pyle had it specially made or if he merely had an existing piece - like this one - modified. One of Pyle’s mahlsticks sits on the little top shelf.

“Hey, black cat! hey, my pretty black cat”

“Hey, black cat! hey, my pretty black cat” by Howard Pyle (1891)

“I send you to-day the three drawings for Giles Corey Yeoman and return enclosed the MS.,“ wrote Howard Pyle to Arthur B. Turnure of Harper & Brothers on January 6, 1892. “I hope you will like the drawings; I do not know whether it was doing them for a new Art Editor or not but I found a considerable difficulty in getting them to my own satisfaction. I hope now they may be done to your satisfaction.”

“The pictures are not yet dry, be careful in unboxing them,” he added.

“Hey, black cat! hey, my pretty black cat” was one of the set - perhaps the best one - of four (not three) paintings (not drawings) Pyle made for Mary E. Wilkins’ “Giles Corey, Yeoman” - almost a year before its appearance in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for December 1892.

Pyle liked the project. Back on October 29, 1891 - and just after reading the manuscript - he had written to Harper’s previous art editor, Frederick B. Schell:

It is one of the best short stories that I have ever had given me to illustrate. It is told with a great deal of power and strength. It seems to have the very tone and local color of the time. I shall be most happy to undertake it and to do my best with it...

It’s hard to imagine what exactly the as-yet-missing original black and white oil painting looks like. Even so, this 4.8 x 7.2" wood-engraving by A. E. Anderson nicely captures the creepy mood of Pyle’s simple, yet powerful composition.

New-Year’s Hymn to St. Nicholas

My blogging slowed drastically due to a book project that proved more time consuming than I expected. But maybe I can balance or juggle more in 2012. Until then, take a look at Howard Pyle’s “New-Year’s Hymn to St. Nicholas” which he painted in May 1880 for “A Glimpse of an Old Dutch Town” by Mrs. M. P. Ferris (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, March 1881).

The First Christmas Tree

“The First Christmas Tree” by Howard Pyle illustrated “The Oak of Geismar” by Henry Van Dyke in Scribner’s Magazine for December 1891. It was engraved on wood by Walter Montieth Aikman.

Howard Pyle Slept Here, Part 3

Yes, Howard Pyle slept here. He also worked here, about ten years before this photograph was taken.

The address is (well, was) 788 Broadway at Tenth Street in New York City, right next to James Renwick’s Grace Church. Fleischmann’s Vienna Model Bakery was on the street level, and, as Pyle’s friend James Edward Kelly recalled: “The upper floors of the building were full of little artist studios, like tiny cocoons, in which young artists tried to work out their daydreams.”

Pyle moved from 1267 Broadway (at 32nd Street) and into Room 31 of 788 Broadway on or about November 1, 1878. He wrote to his mother two days later:

I have looked all over New York and have seen all the studios that are to be seen and am sure that I have one of the nicest, pleasantest rooms in the city. It has a fine north light and two side lights looking out on Broadway. It is only two blocks above Scribners’ office and I can now go down to Harpers’ and return in half an hour, instead of its taking me a half day to complete the journey and its business as formerly. There is steam heat in the room and running water and altogether it is very satisfactory. The rent asked for it last year was thirty-five dollars a month. I have got it for twenty-three, and an allowance for fixing it up, calcimining the walls, etc.

Another friend, artist William Henry Shelton, remembered in his 1918 history of the Salmagundi Club (which met on Friday nights at Science Hall on Eighth Street, opposite the Mercantile Library, from February 1878 to October 1879):

Howard Pyle was one of the popular members of that period when a member’s popularity depended largely on the quality of his work. He was usually too busy to attend the meetings, but it was only a step from Eighth Street to the studio building adjoining Grace Church, and a committee of one was frequently appointed to bring him down. Sometimes he would be found writing, but more often with a sheet of Whatman’s paper on his easel moving backward and forward before a wet drawing by the light of a student-lamp, and not to be disturbed or enticed from his work by threat or persuasion.

(In his 1927 history of the club, Shelton presented this slightly variant picture: “There was a tarrying place at Science Hall in Eighth Street when it was usually my job to entice Howard Pyle to the meeting from his studio next to Grace Church. He would be found with a kerosene lamp on the floor, stretching a sheet of Whatman paper, or otherwise engaged, and not to be enticed.”)

But Pyle didn’t remain there long: it seems that he only took out a six-month lease on place - from November 1, 1878, to May 1, 1879 - and left the city when it was up. At any rate, the New York Herald of May 12, 1879, reported that “Howard Pyle has gone to Wilmington, Del., we regret to hear, to stay.”

It’s interesting to note that Pyle’s posthumously-published short story, “Huntford’s Fair Nihilist” (Harper’s Monthly, June 1913), centers on a young artist, based on Pyle himself:

He had come to New York from a provincial city two years before, with a great deal of talent and some excellent letters of introduction.

His talents found him plenty of work, his letters of introduction admitted him into pleasant homes, and his poverty spurred him on to those vehement efforts that were afterward crowned with so great a success.

Huntford used to breakfast and lunch at the old Budapest Bakery, where they had the best coffee and rolls in New York.

It’s a short leap from the Vienna Bakery to the “Budapest Bakery.” And another character in the story, Frederick Vollmer, an old German “Heraldic Designer,” was likely an amalgam of Joseph Vollmering (1810-1887), the German-born painter, and one “Rudolph B. Irontraut,” heraldic artist (also German-born, c.1822), who were both at 788 Broadway when the 1880 U.S. Census was taken, just over a year after Pyle had left.

The building, of course, is long gone, but Grace Church is still very much there. Some more details can be found here.

A “Thanksgiving-Time Fancy” from Howard Pyle

“The Enemy at the Door” by Howard Pyle, from “Some Thanksgiving-Time Fancies” in Scribner’s Magazine for November 1895.

Howard Pyle on Ford Madox Brown

“Lear and Cordelia” (1849-54) by Ford Madox Brown

Despite his self-described “hermit-like” existence, Howard Pyle didn’t live in a vacuum, and one of the major points of the the new exhibit and book, Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered, is that his work was informed by myriad sources: from Winslow Homer to Japanese art to James Tissot to Walter Crane.

From his childhood, Pyle was also exposed to the Pre-Raphaelites: among other things, a print of William Holman Hunt’s “Light of the World” hung in the Pyle home as early as 1861 (and one is featured in the show, next to Pyle’s similar “The Closed Door”) and books illustrated by John Everett Millais were in the family’s library. And he often discussed them in his lectures. On November 21, 1904, for instance, he mentioned Ford Madox Brown’s “Lear and Cordelia” to his students:

I would like you to see Ford Madox Brown’s picture of Lear and Cordelia. Lear is half-lying back on his throne, looking like an old lion with his white beard and around are gathered all the courtiers. Some of them are in front of the others so that, perhaps, a part of a face is hidden but it looks right, as it is that way in a crowd. The faces and parts of faces are so strong in character that they might be faithful portraits of people.

That group of painters, Ford Madox Brown, Millais and Rossetti did their work with great simplicity and truth.

As it happens, the Delaware Art Museum also houses the largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite art in the United States, so take a look after you wander through the Pyle show (not to mention the Pyle galleries) and note the many similarities.

Two Howard Pyle Exhibits

A little over a week ago, I finally visited the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and saw their Howard Pyle exhibit, which just closed. It was absolutely worth seeing, especially since they put the bulk of their extensive Pyle holdings on view. A couple of things I’d never heard of or seen in person: sketches, studies, drawings, paintings, photos - a real cornucopia of Pylean goodies. And the show was supplemented by a fair number of works by his students, including pictures made under Pyle’s supervision: drawings of plaster casts, paintings of costumed models, and more finished illustrations. Scores of things. I only wish I could have seen it all more than once!

Luckily, the Delaware Art Museum is commemorating the centenary of Pyle’s death (and the subsequent founding of the Delaware Art and Library Society, which became The Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, and, finally, the DAM) with a new exhibit.

OK, I admit I had fantasized of a show hung Louvre-style, with every bit of wall space covered with the hundreds of Pyles the museum has accumulated over the last 100 years. Only a relative fraction of them are on display, however.

But the presentation of Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered is unusually - surprisingly - fresh and sophisticated. Stepping down into the hushed yet huge gallery is like entering a cathedral, or at least a “Church of Pyle”: the overall lighting is low, but the spotlit paintings shine like jeweled reliquaries, or panels any “Old Master” would be justly proud of. I can’t help but echo what Pyle himself said after he first visited the galleries of Florence:

...as I stood among the pictures, I felt that there was a great glow of warm yellow light emanating from them and surrounding everything. They are a great lesson to any artist, and I hope and think I shall learn much from them.

Go look, bask, and learn.

Howard Pyle in Salon

Salon features an interview with Margaretta Frederick, Chief Curator of the Delaware Art Museum, where the new Howard Pyle exhibit just opened. The piece also includes a slideshow.

One minor correction to the slideshow: the photograph of Pyle in his studio (pretending to paint the already-finished “The Evacuation of Charlestown”) was taken by C. P. M. Rumford (not “Runeford”), most likely in January 1899.

A Friend Remembers Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle grinning in Italy, a few months before his death in 1911

Almost immediately after Howard Pyle died - 100 years ago today - his friends and acquaintances began to record their thoughts about him. I’ve always been fond of one particular reminiscence written and published on the very day of Pyle’s death in the Boston Evening Transcript. The author was the journalist Edward Noble Vallandigham, who worked at the Wilmington newspaper Every Evening, The Day of Baltimore, the New York Mail & Express, etc., and who was a fellow member (with Pyle) of the Quill and Grill Club and Pyle’s “esteemed friend of many years standing”. He later wrote the book Delaware and the Eastern Shore: Some Aspects of a Peninsula Pleasant and Well Beloved (1922). A few of Vallandigham’s details aren’t quite right, but, overall, his portrait of Pyle captures something a little different than we see in, say, the reminiscences of Pyle’s students...


HOWARD PYLE

When I first made the acquaintance of Howard Pyle, back in the middle seventies of the last century, he was a full-faced young man three or four years under thirty, and already, after a period of apprenticeship to severe economy, in New York, married, living at Wilmington, and earning $5000 a year as illustrator and writer. He was a simple and extremely attractive young man, six feet tall, full chested, broad shouldered, and well featured, with a fine cranium, frank blue eyes and a ready smile. His home was in a big old house in a part of the city once fashionable, if anything in Quaker Wilmington deserved that description, but then beginning to be deserted for suburban and semi-urban quarters.

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It was my good fortune soon after making Pyle’s acquaintance to set up house keeping with two college mates, both struggling young lawyers, one, Lewis C. Vandegrift, afterward highly successful and greatly beloved, but unhappily now dead more than ten years, and Charles M. Curtis of New England ancestry, who has since become chancellor of Delaware. To our extremely modest menage came a group of very good fellows of whom Pyle was one, and his house was a place of resort for our little household and some of our guests, notably Leighton Howe, a brother of M. A. DeW. Howe of this city, and a most delightful companion with whom one could have the liveliest kind of quarrel upon any topic under heaven.

As Pyle prospered in his work he built a studio in the upper part of the city, just off Delaware avenue, an agreeable residence street, and to this studio we were all invited from time to time for picnic suppers and the like. Pyle had as manservant about the studio an extremely black and altogether idle Negro boy named Ferdinand, and for thirty years he was accustomed to quote as an exquisite witticism my foolish inquiry as to whether Ferdinand were worth two in the bush. We were all rather young then.

For reasons not explicable upon any theory of social comfort Pyle then summered at Rehoboth, Del., a resort as hot as Tophet and infested with mosquitoes. Its sole attraction was a good bathing beach and a startlingly realistic mirage. The cottage, which he shared with his mother-in-law, the sweetest imaginable old lady, whose Quaker bringing up did not prevent her from offering welcome liquid refreshment after the bath, was the scene of a hospitality almost recklessly prodigal. Later Pyle abandoned Rehoboth and summered at Chadds Ford on the Brandywine, where he established a summer school of design, and still later he removed his place of residence to Delaware avenue, and enlarged his studio so as to provide room for his pupils, who had increased in number and would have overwhelmed him had he chosen to accept all comers.

The establishment of his school of illustration grew out of a long cherished plan to aid young men of promise toward realizing their artistic ideals. To this school nobody was admitted who did not give promise of real talent, and who was unwilling to devote himself solely to the work in hand. Pyle made no charge for his services as teacher, but permitted pupils to pay for the use of the studio and materials. The man who failed of industry was ruthlessly sent away, but the worker with real talent got as much of the teacher’s time as he chose to ask. Gradually Pyle gathered about him at Wilmington a little group of illustrators who earned their living by the art he had done so much to teach them, and who were privileged to claim his continued advice and criticism.

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When Thomas F. Bayard went abroad as ambassador to the Court of St. James, he rented to Pyle his big, queer old mansion on the outskirts of Wilmington, the house in which Myra Clark Gaines, the New Orleans claimant, was born. Here, as in all his other homes, Pyle exercised a generous hospitality, and the place with its wide porches, big airy rooms, ample grounds and wide prospect was well suited to such a purpose. Pyle found it, however, a most expensive place of residence, as the terms of his rental bound him to necessary repairs which required a considerable outlay. A few years ago, by which time Pyle was earning a large income by his indefatigable work of various kinds, he was tempted by an extravagant offer for S. S. McClure to become art editor of McClure’s Magazine. He passed nearly half his time in New York looking after his work for the magazine, and on meeting him at the City Club soon after his employment began, I found him full of enthusiasm in his undertaking, and of ardent admiration for Mr. McClure. Not long after, however, news came that the arrangement had been discontinued. I fancy Pyle had become too firmly set in his own views of artistic propriety, to work well for another, and the exile from home, which he dearly loved, must have gone hard with a man of his temperament.

It was characteristic of Pyle to become greatly absorbed in ideas, projects and somewhat in persons. In religion he was a convinced Swedenborgian, and consequently much of a mystic. At one time he became deeply interested in the Single Tax, but he long ago ceased to care for Mr. George’s ideas. Private theatricals were one of his passions, and he gave himself to this amusement with something like abandon. 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.”

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The years dealt most kindly with Pyle, and in his middle fifties he was one of the most delightful looking of men. His head, indeed, was gray where it was not bald, but his face was rosy, his carriage erect, and his expression one of ripe benevolence and delightful openness. When I last saw him I sat by as he worked at a picture in colors, and we talked as he painted, a double occupation not unusual with him. It was on this occasion that he laid down the axiom, “If your art cannot be great, make it useful.” This, I think, gave a hint of his real ambition, which was to be a creative painter in oils. His visit to Italy was with a view to the study of Italian art at first hand, and had he been spared a dozen years we might have seen a fruitful harvest from that new undertaking. His death leaves a great gap in the ranks of American illustrators, and he is a loss as well to American letters that will be especially felt by thousands of his youthful admirers. Pyle was a most interesting personality, a man of singular sweetness, purity and sanity, the relentless pursuer of his own best ideals, and a worker of prodigious and tireless energy.

Behind the Scenes at the Delaware Art Museum

A behind the scenes look at the Pyle exhibit opening this Saturday, November 12th, at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington.

What Did Howard Pyle Die Of?

What did Howard Pyle die of? Most contemporary newspapers reported that it was “heart failure” or “heart disease”. The more common notion - via those closer to the Pyle family - is that it was “kidney trouble” or Bright’s Disease - and his known symptoms are consistent with that diagnosis.

And still another, also kidney-related cause of death can be found in the “Report of the Death of an American Citizen” sent by the American Consular Service at Florence, Italy, to the U.S. State Department. This document - signed, by the way, by Leo J. Keena (1878-1967), the American Consul, and an acquaintance of the Pyles - said it was “uric acid poisoning”.

Coincidentally, Pyle’s brother Clifford died at 53 of “a kidney affliction” in 1910 and his brother Walter died at 59 of Bright’s Disease in 1919. So perhaps a genetic component was involved.

Howard Pyle on Death

“To me Death is a most interesting change to look forward to and the other life is as certain a thing to me as the passing from one room to another room - except that it means just such a vital and radical change as that of a seed that quits its dead casing of earth to become a tree in the sunshine and air of the area.”

- Howard Pyle to Richard Watson Gilder, October 5, 1892

100 Years Ago... Today?

Howard Pyle died on November 9, 1911, in Italy at 4.30 a.m. - so it was still November 8th in Wilmington, Delaware, no?

Hot Air at Howard Pyle’s Studio

From the Sunday Morning Star of Wilmington, Delaware, November 4, 1883: