Howard Pyle

Abbey was the American in England. His friend Howard Pyle, whose death has also come upon us, was the American at home. Not in America alone, however, but over the Atlantic is the death of Pyle lamented by thousands of boys and girls who delighted in his drawings and his books, by hundreds of younger men and women, whose endeavors he inspired and whose work he guided; and by all and every one who came in contact with that abounding individual. It was our loss that here in New York we so rarely saw this delight of all the juveniles, this jolly prince of illustrators, this genial man, who rather loved to dispense hospitality, kindliness, and helpful teaching in his home at Wilmington. As a man he was a home-abider, and as an artist he trusted his education to the influences, if not to the teaching, of his native land. Perhaps he chiefly taught himself. At all events, he would have nothing of Europe and what it proffered, till recently he was at last beguiled abroad. Then with new awakening and young enthusiasm he accepted the joy and the instruction of all the good things and beautiful he found. He was still a strong man. No one would have thought the hand of death so near. It touched him suddenly—to our large regret.

Henry Osborn Taylor
1912 Century Association Yearbook

Pyle was a popular illustrator and writer who did numerous illustrations for Harper’s Weekly and other periodicals. He wrote and illustrated a number of books, including his 1883 classic The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which remains in print to this day. In 1888, he wrote Otto of the Silver Hand, published by Harper Brothers. It was his publisher J. Henry Harper who proposed Pyle for membership in the Century.

In 1894 he began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University), and after 1900 he founded his own school of art and illustration called the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. Some of his more famous students were Olive Rush, N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, and Jessie Willcox Smith.

He was widely respected during his life, and continues to be highly regarded, by illustrators and fine artists. His contemporary Vincent van Gogh spoke of Pyle in a letter to his brother, saying that Pyle’s work “. . . struck me dumb with admiration.”

He traveled to Florence, Italy, to study mural painting in 1910, and died there in 1911 of a sudden kidney infection (Bright’s Disease).

The Club owns no works by Pyle, but he did illustrate the cover for the 1906 Twelfth Night brochure.

James Charlton
“Centurions on Stamps,” Part I (Exhibition, 2010)