A giant in the field of illustration and children's books, Howard Pyle (1853-1911) published some 3,300 illustrations during his thirty-five-year career. He also wrote many of the stories he illustrated and, as a teacher, shared his artistic views and skills with such students as Maxfield Parrish and N. C. Wyeth, who, along with many others, went on to become celebrated artists in their own right.) This volume contains more than sixty of Pyle's best works. Characterized by an imaginative and colorful realism, his art dramatized themes with universal appeal: the romantic nature of medieval chivalry, the ruthlessness of pirate greed, and the pride of embattled soldiers. Selected from beloved classics and hidden gems and amassed over years of research by an expert in the field, these richly colored drawings will delight a wide audience of art lovers and book collectors.
Author
Howard Pyle was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people. During 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 named the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. The term Brandywine School was later applied to the illustration artists and Wyeth family artists of the Brandywine region by Pitz. Some of his more famous students were N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, Ethel Franklin Betts, Anna Whelan Betts, Harvey Dunn, Clyde O. DeLand, Philip R. Goodwin, Violet Oakley, Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle, Olive Rush, Allen Tupper True, and Jessie Willcox Smith. His 1883 classic publication The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood remains in print, and his other books, frequently with medieval European settings, include a four-volume set on King Arthur. He is also well known for his illustrations of pirates, and is credited with creating the now stereotypical modern image of pirate dress. He published an original novel, Otto of the Silver Hand, in 1888. He also illustrated historical and adventure stories for periodicals such as Harper's Weekly and St. Nicholas Magazine. His novel Men of Iron was made into a movie in 1954, The Black Shield of Falworth. Pyle travelled to Florence, Italy to study mural painting during 1910, and died there in 1911 from a kidney infection (Bright's Disease). His sister Katharine Pyle was also a writer and illustrator. Their mother was the children's author and translator M.C. Pyle.
