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Howard Pyle and the American
Renaissance
March 17 - May 20, 2007
-
Label Copy for the exhibition
-
- George Willoughby Maynard (1843-1923)
- Sappho, circa 1888
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
- Joseph E. Temple Fund, 1889.3
-
- George Willoughby Maynard is known for mural paintings
of allegorical themes and easel paintings featuring classical subjects.
His classical, academic style was developed through training with the sculptor
Henry Kirke Brown, his studies at the National Academy of Design, and through
travel to Rome and Paris.
-
- Sappho was a female poet in ancient Greece, whose life
was fictionalized by Roman historians. One story about her that was most
popular in nineteenth-century European and American art was of her unrequited
love for a young man, Phaon. In deep despair, Sappho stopped singing her
poems and finally threw herself into the sea. Maynard's painting of the
grieving poet underscores the romantic notion that creativity is lost without
the inspiring force of love.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Palamedes Tests the Madness of Odysseus, 1887
- Watercolor on paper
- Illustration for James Baldwin, A Story of the Golden
Age, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887
- Private Collection
-
- Pyle's illustration features a dramatic moment in which
Odysseus, feigning madness to avoid going to war, nearly runs over his
son with a horse and plow. The angled composition and descriptive detail
heighten tension and raise curiosity about what is to happen next.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Apollo Slaying the Python,
1887
- Watercolor on paper
- Illustration for James Baldwin, A Story of the Golden
Age, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887
- Private Collection
-
- The American Renaissance offered artists the opportunity
to study the nude and feature it more prominently in their art. Nudes do
not often occur in Pyle's art, possibly because so much of it illustrated
stories for broad public consumption. However, for illustrations with poetic
or symbolic content, he frequently drew unclothed figures. Here the god
Apollo's gracefully swirling veil both covers his form and balances the
design of the snake's curving body. The flowering tree is a decorative
element common to Pre-Raphaelite and Japanese art. Its inclusion demonstrates
the eclecticism and cultural borrowing in American Renaissance art.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- A Thousand Miles a Day, 1900
- Illustration for Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Chimaera,"
in A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys and Tanglewood Tales, Boston
and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1900
- Collection of Brandywine River Museum
- Purchased in honor of Andrew L. Johnson
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Painting for Howard Pyle bookplate design, not dated
- Oil on wood panel
- Private collection
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Untitled (angel with a lyre), 1900
- Ink on paper
- Headpiece for "Poetry," in Edwin Markham, The
Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, New York: Doubleday and McClure,
Co., 1900
- Collection of Brandywine River Museum
-
- Markham's poem The Man with the Hoe uses references
to Greek mythology to describe nature, the sacred and profane, and the
brevity of life. Pyle's ink line vignettes and headpiece illustrations
ornament the pages and compliment the text with symbolic figures and angels,
who blast trumpets, read from scrolls, strum harps, or stand in contemplation.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Divine Adventure, 1900
- Ink on paper
- Illustration for Edwin Markham, The Man with the Hoe
and Other Poems
- New York: Doubleday and McClure, Co., 1900
- Collection of Brandywine River Museum
-
- Markham's poem and Pyle's image refer to the Greek myth
of Hylas, a handsome youth who, while fetching water, was pulled into a
pool by a water nymph. Markham used the analogy of Hylas to highlight the
value of youthful experiences to better understand real life. The English
artist John William Waterhouse's sensuous painting of Hylas and the
Nymphs (1896) was especially famous, and Pyle was probably familiar
with it. Drawn from imagination rather than actual models, Pyle's figures
express purity and innocence.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- The Wail of the Wandering Dead,
1900
- Ink on paper
- Illustration for Edwin Markham, The Man with the Hoe
and Other Poems, New York: Doubleday and McClure, Co., 1900
- Collection of Brandywine River Museum
-
- Edward McCartan (1879-1947)
- Pan, 1913
- Bronze
- Collection of the National Academy of Design
-
- Throughout his career, New York artist Edward McCartan
created sculpture based on Greek mythology. This figure of Pan is a smaller
version of a 56-inch garden sculpture he displayed at the National Academy
of Design and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
Although McCartan was a generation younger than Pyle, he is among those
whose art retained a strong link with the ideals of the American Renaissance
into the early decades of the twentieth century.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Pan Playing the Flute as Isis Looks On, 1899
- Oil on board
- Illustration for Ellen M. H. Gates, "The Body to
the Soul," Harper's New Monthly, August, 1899
- Collection of American Illustrators Gallery
-
- Like much of nineteenth-century literature, Ellen M.
H. Gates' poem "The Body to the Soul" describes the disparity
between man's mortal nature and the eternal nature of his soul. By depicting
the soul above the body, Pyle's composition effectively dramatizes the
poem's theme.
-
- He used the image of the wise Egyptian goddess Isis to
symbolize the soul. Her crown and musical rattle are objects usually associated
with her. However, her wings are based on associations with the Phoenix
of Greek mythology. Her Grecian-style garment is Pyle's own device.
-
- Pyle used the Greek god Pan to represent the body. Pan
is a god of the wood and fields, but during the Renaissance he personified
salaciousness and greed. Pyle's moral sense stressed Pan's more positive
attributes of energetic spirit and musical ability.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- The Wonderclock, 1888
- Ink on paper
- Frontispiece for Howard Pyle, The Wonderclock,
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1888
- Collection of Brandywine River Museum
-
- For many of his ink drawings in The Wonderclock,
Pyle derived inspiration from the woodcuts and engravings of German Renaissance
artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). Pyle's source for Dürer's
work was his own copy of Georg Hirth's 1881-90 publication, Kulturgeschictliches
Bilderbuch, a six-volume collection that reproduced European prints
of the late-fifteenth-through-eighteenth centuries. The figure of "Father
Time" is the most like Dürer's work, while the boy playing the
pipes has a more individual appearance.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Nero Holding a Golden Lute, with Rome in Flames, 1897
- Oil on canvas
- Frontispiece for Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis,
vol. 2, Boston: Little Brown and Co,
- 1897
- Collection of Delaware Art Museum
- Gift of Mrs. Richard C. du Pont
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Peractum Est!, 1897
- Oil on canvas
- Illustration for Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis,
vol. 2, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1897
- Collection of Delaware Art Museum
-
- Pyle's illustration depicts the battle between Calendio,
a famous retiarius, who was allowed to fight with only a net and a trident,
and Lanio, a gladiator. The gladiator wears bronze armor and a helmet that
Sienkiewicz described as "a giant beetle" due to the ridge from
front to back. Pyle's illustration makes use of well-researched historic
details to convince the viewer of period authenticity. His real focus,
like that of a good storyteller, is on the strained bodies in desperate
struggle, the hushed anticipation of the crowd, and the drama about to
unfold.
-
- Because of the fame of Jean-Léon Gérôme's
painting Pollice Verso (1872), it is likely that Pyle referred to
a reproduction of it. It also appears that Pyle utilized an illustration
of the Olympic Games published in Scribner's in 1896 to inspire
his composition. The magazine image is displayed in the exhibition case
nearby.
-
- Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904)
- Pollice Verso (Thumbs Down),
1872-1900
- Chromolithograph
- Collection of the Phoenix Art Museum
- Museum purchase
-
- Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) was
a leading French painter from the mid-to-late-nineteenth century. He was
highly regarded in America, and his guidance was sought by many American
artists including Thomas Eakins, Kenyon Cox, Abbot Thayer, Edwin Blashfield,
and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Gérôme's art featured exotic subjects,
Greek mythology and French history.
-
- Gérôme's painting, Pollice Verso,
1872 (Collection of the
- J. Paul Getty Museum) is counted among his most famous
works. Gérôme's connection through marriage to his dealer,
Adolphe Goupil, led to promotion of his works through reproduction. This
chromolithograph print exemplifies the kind of reproduction which Pyle
may have seen.
-
- Francis Davis Millet (1846-1912)
- A Handmaiden, 1886
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Mr. and Mrs. D. Leven
-
- Francis Davis Millet created many genre scenes of ancient
Greece and Rome. A Handmaiden is one of those informed by the research
he did on Roman clothing while designing costumes for a production of Oedipus
Tyrannus.
-
- Millet and Pyle corresponded for years regarding professional
matters. Millet was instrumental in recommending Pyle for the murals in
the Hudson County Courthouse, Jersey City, in 1910. They shared many literary
and artistic friends, such as Mark Twain, Edwin Blashfield, Augustus Saint
Gaudens, and Edwin Austin Abbey. With Abbey, Millet began an artists' enclave
in the village of Broadway, England. Millet's work shows the influence
of another Broadway friend, the influential Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema,
who is famous for his lush historical paintings.
-
- Howard Pyle
- The Poet at Twilight, 1901
- Oil on canvas
- Illustration for Clement Laurence Smith, ed, The Odes
and Epodes of Horace, vol 1. Boston: The Bibliophile Society, 1901
- Collection of Winterthur Museum
- Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont
-
- Robert Frederic Blum (1857-1903)
- A Garland of Roses (June),
circa 1897
- Pastel and oil on canvas
- Collection of The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia
- Gift of Joyce and Henry Schwab, 2005.276
-
- Robert Frederick Blum was a painter, etcher and illustrator,
who studied at the McMicken School of Art in Cincinnati and at The Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. In the late 1870s, he lived in
New York, creating illustrations for Scribner's and St. Nicholas
magazines and traveled to England, Italy, Spain, France, Holland, Belgium
and Japan on assignment for these publications.
-
- Through his associations with James McNeil Whistler,
Frank Duveneck, and Joseph Pennell, in the 1880s Blum became interested
in recreating atmospheric effects in oil and pastel. He is famous for paintings
and illustrations of Venice and Japan. He was awarded the Gold Medal for
his work exhibited in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago,
and again in 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Blum and Pyle
knew each other in their early days of illustration, but Blum's later pursuit
of painterly techniques was contrary to Pyle's goals for American art.
-
- Blum's A Garland of Roses is related to his music-themed
murals for Mendelssohn Hall. The classically draped figure leaning casually
against a wall captures the quality of "everyday life" that American
Renaissance artists sought.
-
- Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912)
- Sappho and Alcaeus, 1881
- Oil on panel
- Collection of The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 37.159
-
- Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema's lush paintings offer
romantic, sensual interpretations of Greek and Roman life and were influential
for European and American artists. In 1870, Alma-Tadema moved to London,
renowned for its stunning archaeological collections at the British Museum
and for the literary society's interest in classical antiquity. There he
found broad patronage for his art among the wealthy middle class. His genre
scenes depicting life in ancient times appealed to English artists Frederick
Leighton and John Everett Millais, as well as to the expatriate American
painters Edwin Austin Abbey and Francis Davis Millet. There is no record
of Pyle's opinion of Alma-Tadema's work. Yet it is likely that through
his association with Abbey and Millet, and through numerous articles in
contemporary magazines, Pyle was well aware of the Dutch artist's opulent,
pageant-like style.
-
- A review of Alma-Tadema's work in London's Magazine
of Art in 1890 indicates the period's confidence in its artistic superiority:
-
- Mr. Alma-Tadema paints ancient Rome for us as it
- ought to have been . seeking to inculcate a love of
that
- art which can only be reached by honest industry and
- hard work. He makes us believe that the scene and
the
- objects he has painted are more like "the real
thing" than
- the originals themselves.
-
- This description can be applied to the work displayed
here. The painting depicts one of the period's favorite subjects, the poet
Sappho, as she and her companions listen to the poet Alcaeus play a kithara.
The artist referred to the Theater of Dionysos in Athens for his setting.
-
- Francis Day (1863-1942)
- Reverie, circa 1905
- Oil on wood panel
- Private collection
-
- Francis Day studied at The Art Students League in New
York and at the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris. Returning to the United
States, he became a member of the National Academy of Design. He was known
for his genre scenes, portraits and landscapes.
- The image in Reverie is probably based on Lawrence
Alma-Tadema's widely popular paintings of young Greek or Roman women lying
on marble exedras or casually leaning against walls or parapets. Similar
works were painted by Francis Davis Millet, Will H. Low, Frederick Blum
and others. Day's painting adds a dreamy, languorous quality that offered
great appeal to a middle class market.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- The Eclogues of Vergil, 1904
- Oil on board
- Illustration for Publius Vergilius Maro, The Eclogues
of Vergil, Baron Bowen, trans. Boston: Privately printed by Nathan
Haskell Dole, 1904
- Private collection
-
- While this painting emphasizes the content and spirit
of the text, it makes the same use of a specific kind of architectural
detail seen in works in this exhibition by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Frederic
Blum, and Francis Day.
-
- Will H. Low (1853-1932)
- National Academy of Design Sixty-Sixth Annual Exhibition, 1891
- Graphite, ink, charcoal and watercolor
- Collection of the National Academy of Design
-
- Will Hicok Low was a painter and illustrator from Albany,
New York. He studied in Paris at the École des Beaux Arts with Jean-Leon
Gérôme, where he met and befriended Augustus Saint-Gaudens
in 1877. In the mid-1880s he became famous for his illustrations for John
Keats' poem "Lamia," and Odes and Sonnets. He eventually
specialized in figure paintings and murals and collaborated with artist
John La Farge and the architect H. H. Richardson. In 1906, Low and Pyle
were both involved in painting murals for the Essex County Court House,
New Jersey.
-
- Low was a member of the National Academy of Design and
made this design for the annual exhibition brochure. The sketch personifies
"Art" as a classical woman with palette in hand, supported by
classical architecture, and with her arm extended in a welcoming gesture.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Drawing for Grolier Club bookplate, circa 1890
- Ink on paper
- Private collection
-
- Pyle and other artists were members of numerous clubs
and artists' associations. In addition to their own work, artists were
frequently called upon to design artwork for club activities, such as publications,
flyers and announcements, bookplates, and posters.
-
- Kenyon Cox (1856-1919)
- The Blessed Damozel: Title,
1886
- Oil, grisaille on canvas
- Illustration for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed
Damozel, New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1886
- Collection of the Brooklyn Museum
- Gift of Mrs. Daniel Chauncey, 25.840c
-
- Kenyon Cox was born in Warren, Ohio, and studied in Paris
with Carolus-Duran in 1877 and Jean-Léon Gérôme from
1875 to 1882. The influence of Gérôme's academic figural style
can be seen in allegorical murals Cox created for the Library of Congress
and Bowdoin College. Cox was known as an illustrator and as an author who
wrote articles on art for magazines. He also authored Old Masters and
New (1905) and The Classic Point of View (1911). Cox greatly
admired Saint-Gaudens and published an article about his work in the November
1887 issue of The Century Magazine. From some surviving documents
it is known that Cox and Pyle corresponded socially. It can be presumed
from their illustrations that they shared ideals for American art and the
aesthetic education of the public.
-
- The angel on Cox's title page illustration for The
Blessed Damozel is based on the winged figure of Victory from Greek
and Roman sculptures. The winged figure was popular with a number of artists,
notably Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Abbott Handerson Thayer.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Why Seek Ye the Living Among the Dead?, 1905
- Oil on canvas
- Illustration for John Finley, "Why Seek Ye the Living
Among the Dead?," Collier's, April 1905
- Collection of The Kelly Collection of American Illustration
-
- This work was inspired by Pyle's admiration for Augustus
Saint-Gaudens' figure of Victory for Sherman Monument.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- A Dream of Young Summer,
1901
- Oil on canvas
- Illustration for Edith M. Thomas, "A Dream of Young
Summer," Harper's Monthly, June 1901
- Private Collection
-
- Pyle's painting mixes the image of a winged Victory with
a piping wood nymph to create his idea of "Young Summer." Such
combination of images -- therefore of ideas -- is characteristic of the
eclecticism of the American Renaissance.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Cor Cordia: A Christmas Greeting from Thy Husband, 1881
- Watercolor on vellum
- Private collection
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Untitled (head of a man with laurel wreath), circa 1902
- Charcoal on paper
- Collection of Brandywine River Museum
-
- According to Pyle student Thornton Oakley, this drawing
was done as a class demonstration.
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Richard De Bury and the Young Edward III, 1903
- Oil on canvas
- Illustration for Thomas Frognall Dibdin, The Bibliomania
or Book-Madness, Boston: The Bibliophile Society, 1903
- Jointly owned by The Delaware Art Museum and the
- Brandywine River Museum by purchase, 2006
-
- In this painting, Edward III (1312-1877), the future
King of England, reads a Bible while his tutor, Richard de Bury (1287-1345)
monitors his progress. De Bury was a Benedictine monk, a scholar, diplomat,
bishop of Durham, and bibliophile. Pyle's stylistic approach to the work
is decorative, emphasizing pattern and color. It is related to Pyle's image
of Erasmus which, in turn, was based on the sixteenth-century German artist
Hans Holbein's portraits of the scholar.
-
- William Bicknell (1860-1948)
- Richard De Bury and the Young Edward III, 1903
- Etching on paper
- Collection of Brandywine River Museum
-
- Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
- Peire Vida-Satirist and Poet,
1903
- Oil on canvas