Howard Pyle and the Illustrated Story

Meanderer

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Pyle
"Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of William Pyle and Margaret Churchman Painter. As a child, he attended private schools and was interested in drawing and writing from a very young age. He was an indifferent student, but his parents encouraged him to study art, particularly his mother. He studied for three years at the studio of F. A. Van der Wielen in Philadelphia, and this constituted the whole of his artistic training, aside from a few lessons at the Art Students League of New York".

 

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.....for when you think that YOU'RE having a bad day.

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Some “Occasional Comics” by Howard Pyle


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“I used to earn a little odd money by drawing an occasional comic,” wrote Howard Pyle in his scrapbook about some of the work he did when he first moved to New York in the fall of 1876. “The Night Watch” (above) was one such drawing, published as “Family Cares” in Scribner’s Monthly for April 1877. “Bliss” (below) was another, which appeared in the same magazine the following month. From Pyle’s letters home, we know that he drew these two in November 1876".

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Is This Young Howard Pyle?​

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Figure 1. Young man photographed by Emily Webb, Wilmington, Delaware, 1870s


"Curiously and coincidentally, the photographer of Figure 1, Emily Webb, was Howard Pyle’s first-cousin-once-removed: she had grandparents in common with Pyle’s father. Emily was born on February 23, 1830, died on April 24, 1914, and somewhere along the line - and at a time when female photographers were quite rare - she set up her “Union Gallery” on Market Street in Wilmington. Her sister Sarah, meanwhile, was the wife of the Saturday Evening Post’s Henry Peterson, who was also Pyle’s mother’s first publisher".
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Pyle as a Picture Maker​

"One frosty autumn day Howard Pyle (1853-1911) brought his illustration students outdoors to find some wild hickory nuts. After they had gathered up the fallen harvest from alongside the banks of a millstream, they noticed many more nuts resting on the stream bottom. “Well boys, there is only one way to get them,” one of his students, Frank Schoonover, recalled him saying. Pyle removed his shoes and stockings and rolled up the sleeves of his sweater. He waded into the icy water, plunging his arms down to the streambed to gather the remainder. Pyle did not allow the moment to pass without a lesson. “The poor soldiers at Valley Forge felt the cold, just as we feel the cold now,” he said. “The ragged lot that marched against the Hessians at Trenton felt the icy water and the numbing cold and I don’t believe it’s possible to paint a picture of that sort within the four walls of your studio unless you feel the cold even as they did.”

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Fig. 1. Howard Pyle, Washington and Steuben at Valley Forge, 1896

"In Pyle’s illustration Washington and Steuben at Valley Forge, the two leaders trudge through the snowy camp, as the soldiers give a desultory salute. The composition alternates dense clusters of figures with stark, empty expanses of snow and sky. The cold wind flutters a flag and tugs at the hem of Washington’s cloak".
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