Howard Pyle: King Arthur and His Knights

[The Story of King Arthur and his Knights, written and illustrated by Howard Pyle is copyright © 1903 by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York and first published in November 1903. Subsequent editions and reprints have been published by Scribner's as well as Dover Publications.]

Henry C. Pitz, in his excellent book, The Brandywine Tradition, Houghton Mifflin, 1969, has this to say of Pyle’s King Arthur:

". . . it was an opulent stirring volume which opened the gate to an imaginary empire of medieval legend. It did not reflect the merriment of the Robin Hood or the innocence of
The Wonder Clock, but it had much of the power, masculinity and impressiveness of Otto of the Silver Hand. Its text captured the medieval spirit, yet the book was readable. The pictures reflected the influence of Albrecht Dürer as it had been transformed by Howard Pyle. The story had been a success when serialized in the pages of St. Nicholas, and it was both an immediate and lasting success as a book. Today it occupies a permanent place on the shelf of children’s classics."

Click on the following images to enlarge.

Pitz also tells us that "Except for the King Arthur series, the pictures of his later years concerned themselves entirely with adult subject material [not to be confused with what adult subject material means today] and, as a consequence, they became more factual than imaginative."

The illustrations above and the following vignettes from the book illustrate and glorify feminine beauty and appear to me to be that Pyle was already well on his way to leaving the world of children's literature. Click on images to enlarge.

[A second color that did not appear in the original drawings has been added in these images for effect.]

Next: Howard Pyle's Sindbad.

Comments

[oliver]

dear sir or ma'am, i deeply appreciate the pictures, but wouldn't you mind sending or giving me more of those?? i am a third year student from CPU and our project is to draw these pictures of the characters from king arthur and the knights of the round table. Please, kindly send it to my e-mail address, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. if you can't can you give me websites where i can get some of those, thank you sooo much...:)

[leslie]

you site was so interesting
thankyou leslie.

[michelle]

Your site is wonderful!!
I love it!