Howard Pyle: Beginnings

"An Attack on a Galleon" by Howard Pyle

"American illustrator Howard Pyle was born on March 5, 1853. He was from old Quaker stock, and his parents were persons of most unusual culture. His mother in particular was an eager spirit, always in quest of the beautiful and the interesting. She had had the keenest desire to fulfill her own dreams of a literary and artistic career, and when this had become an impossibility, she had passed on her desire to her children, and kept continually before them the books which appealed to her: 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' the novels of Dickens and Thackeray, and also fairy tales. It is possible to trace back Howard's interest in illustration to her influence. 

He wrote: 

'I can remember many an hour in which I lay stretched out before the fire upon the rug, in a snug, warm little library whilst the hickory logs snapped and crackled in the fireplace and the firelight twinkled on the andirons, with the snow softly falling outside, covering all the faraway fields with a blanket of white. Many and many an hour do I remember lying thus, turning over leaf after leaf of those English papers or of that dear old volume of 'The Newcomes' or of 'The Old Curiosity Shop' where you may see the picture of Master Humphrey with the dream people flying about his head. So looking at the pictures, my mother, busy with the work on her lap, would tell me the story that belonged to each. So that time, perhaps, was the beginning of that taste that led me to do the work I am now doing.'

When Howard was old enough to gain something by a little study, his parents sent him to school. Here, by his own confession, he was far more interested in drawing pictures on his slate or in the margins of his book, then he was in the intricacies of grammar or arithmetic. While he joined in the play of his school companions, he was far easier when off by himself sketching away with some romantic idea in his head or one peacefully sitting at home happily intent on some tale of the Middle Ages. 

His mother had visions of her son fulfilling the dreams which she had had in her own childhood and youth and was overjoyed that he was giving such manifestations of promise. He was allowed to sketch and scribble away - for he wanted to write as well as to draw - as much as he pleased, and she was always ready to make suggestions and to criticize what he produced. Who would deny that such patience and such sympathy would have an incomparable affect on the development of the child?"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Howard Pyle, A Chronicle"by Charles D. Abbott.)