Artist Howard Pyle

 

The author of a 1907 article in The Outlook was unsure how to classify Howard Pyle or his style. Finally, he settled on “American” because the “inspiration of his paintings, his illustrations, and his teaching appears to lie in one or another trait of character typically American.”

Pyle taught at the Drexel Institute, the Art Students’ League, and in his studio in Wilmington, Delaware. His students included Maxfield Parrish, Violet Oakley, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Sarah Stillwell.

And while many of Pyle’s students were women, he had very little faith in their permanent artistic ambitions, according to author Jessie Trimble. “He is merely another man who believes that the average woman with ambitions loses them when she marries.” A view that could easily tank his career if he was working today.

And unlike modern schools that focused primarily on art, Pyle urged “his pupils to write stories and illustrate them, not only to stimulate the imagination but to make more vivid the subject for actual drawing.” He reminded students that “art wasn’t merely the decoration of canvas with color, but the objectification of thought and feeling.”

Pyle also differed from most artists in his choice of models, saying the artist needed to visualize his subject before touching brush to canvas. As a result, he used the same man, John Weller, as his model for nearly twenty years.

Howard Pyle’s work can be found in the most popular periodicals of the day. He was published in Harper’s from the 1880s to his death in 1911. He illustrated a series of articles on the American Revolution for Scribner’s Magazine in 1898.

He wrote several novels, including Robin Hood and His Merry Men, in 1883 and later created a four-volume set on King Arthur.

historybytes offers unique historical collectibles. https://www.ebay.com/str/historybytes