Howard Pyle: To Be or Not To Be?

"A Wreck in the Offing" by Howard Pyle

"Up to this point Howard Pyle was conflicted on whether he should concentrate on either writing or drawing. Finally, but not without severe internal questionings and many delays, he decided that his abilities led him more naturally towards art. With this change in ambition it became necessary to have a studio, and here he worked on picture after picture, gradually building up a method of attack which was entirely his own. His ideas were good and he had plenty of them.

Mr. Charles Parsons, the art editor for Harper & Brothers, had gathered around him and trained a most remarkable group of young illustrators, among whom were Abbey, Frost, and Reinhart. With these young men he was building up the pictorial side of his magazines to a point which had never before been reached in this country.

To him Howard would take his sketches, and since the ideas were very often good, Mr. Parsons would accept them, but since in his opinion the technical work did not come up to the standard, he would have one of his staff artists redraw the picture. This was, of course, very humiliating to Howard. The matter rankled, and finally he asked Mr. Parsons for a chance to try his own hand at it. 

He tells the story himself:

'I took one day to 'Harper's' an idea for a sketch which I had called 'A Wreck in the Offing.' I begged Mr. Parsons to allow me to make the picture instead of handing it over to Mr. Abbey or to Mr. Reinhart to elaborate into a real picture. With some reluctance he told me that I might try. I believe I worked upon it over six weeks, and I might indeed have been working upon it today had I not, what with the cost of my models and the expense of living in New York, reduced myself to my last five-cent piece in the world. This forced me to take the drawing down to 'Harpers' instead of drawing it over as I should have liked to have done.

I think it was not until I stood in the awful presence of the art editor himself that I realized how this might be the turning point in my life. I can recall just how he looked at me over his spectacles. To my mind it seemed that he was weighing how best he might break the news to me of my lack of success. The rebound was almost too great when he told me that Mr. Harper had liked the drawing very much and that they were going to use it, and were going to make of it a double-page. My exaltation was so great that it seemed to me that I knew not where I was standing or what had happened to me. I found a friend, and took him Delmonico's and we had lunch of all the delicacies in season and out of season. My drawing was very much liked in the Department and brought me the friendship of all those young Olympians whom before I had regarded from the marsh of my unsuccess.'

This was late in 1877, and from that time everything moved more pleasantly. Harper & Brothers were well pleased with his work, he was associating with the people who most interested him, and he was building up an excellent reputation."

To be continued

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