Howard+Pyle+(1853-1911)

Howard Pyle (1853-1911) was born of New England Quaker stock in Wilmington, Delaware, where his father owned a leather business. His mother brought him up on good books and quality illustration and was the primary force in fostering her son's dual literary and artistic talents. Restricted family finances fortuitously saved Pyle from the conventional 'polishing' in European ateliers and also from the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art. Instead he studied under the Belgian-trained Van der Weilen in a small class, where his technique was improved and his individuality defined. He excelled in overlapping history and legend, drawing upon memories of his quiet, idyllic childhood, interwoven with America's colonial past. Tales of pirates fascinated Pyle: he spent holidays at Rehoboth, a seaside town whose neighbouring sand dunes allegedly hid caches of stolen treasure, and these intrigues were reinforced by a trip to the West Indies and constant reading on the subject. His fellow artist, Frederic Remington, was an ardent admirer of his swashbuckling heroes. Howard Pyle' s Book of Pirates is comprised of scattered selections, collected and published posthumously by his friend, Merle Johnson.

An English contemporary, Walter Crane, preferred the ornate medievalism of Pyle's Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883), considered by many his finest achievement, and the four-volume cycle of Arthurian romance. The acceptance of an illustrated article by Scribner' s Monthly in 1876 initiated Pyle's career. Upon moving to New York city he soon became a regular contributor to popular magazines. St Nicholas paid him the modest fee of $2.50 for each illustrated fable or short story. He was befriended by Winslow Homer, Edwin Abbey and A. B. Frost. In 1894 Pyle turned to teaching, at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, and offered free summer classes to a select group of students at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania. By 1903 he had established another studio in an old grist-mill on the Brandywine River near his home in Wilmington, accepting only three out of almost three hundred applicants. Among those he inspired and challenged were Maxfield Parrish, N. C. Wyeth, and Jessie Willcox Smith. Through them Pyle's vigorous and original traditions were continued and diversified, making a deep and lasting impact on American illustration. Pyle was taken sick on his first trip abroad, and died suddenly in Florence

'An attack on a Galleon'
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates HARPER & BROTHER 1921