100 Years of Illustration

Howard Pyle's Portraits of Women

There are subjects of which the less said, the better. One such subject is the beauty of women.

I would not presume to intellectualize about the women painted by Howard Pyle beyond what anyone can see by looking at them in the stories he illustrated. I’m calling them portraits and you may disagree, but in my opinion these are complete paintings, more than mere illustration. Each image may be enlarged by clicking on it. The titles of the illustrations and dates in which they appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine appear directly below the portraits.

Catherine De Vaucelles, in her Garden, from "In Necessity's Mortar," October 19004.

Mellicent Stood Motionless, Like a Wild Thing at Gaze, from "Mellicent," January 1905.

Beatrix and Esmond, from "Pictures from Thackery," August 1906.

Becky Sharp and Lord Steyne, from "Pictures from Thackery," December 1906.

A Figure to Provoke Tears, from "A Sense of Scarlet," February 1907.

Diana Sherley, from "The Ultimate Master," November 1908.

The Officers Would be Waiting Till She Should Appear, from: "Doña Victoria," February 1908.

The Dancer, from "Lola," January 1909.

Next: Howard Pyle's Civil War.

Howard Pyle: Captain Keitt, 1907

By 1907 when this spectacular illustration (click on image to enlarge) appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine for August, Howard Pyle's star was descending in the heavens and this featured piece stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the illustrations he did for The Ruby of Kishmoor, of which he was author as well.

These are two of the spot illustrations that were mortised within the text. They are chalky, and appear to have gotten by the usually fastidious master who usually destroyed work he felt missed the mark. Or, perhaps it was because of problems with an editor or art director. We can only speculate.

More than likely it was that there was a new star burning even brighter, Charles Dana Gibson and his "slashing and spectacular pen technique," to quote Henry Pitz. The drawing below is Gibson's fetching profile of the young actress Evelyn Nesbit which was entitled: Eternal Question.

Next: Howard Pyle's portraits of women

Howard Pyle: The Fate of a Treasure-Town, 1905

This is the master at his best and at the peak of his career. Some of his students and contemporaries have come close but Howard Pyle owns the subject of pirates. Click on this title page to enlarge and read some of the introduction. The man could write. Consider that the year of publication was 1905, one hundred years ago, when some of the most respected authors of the time are almost unreadable today.

An Attack on a Galleon.

Pyle wrote: "Perhaps one of the convoys lags from the rest of the fleet. There comes skimming out from behind the fringed headland a lean, low pinnace full of half-naked cutthroats–white, black, and yellow. It swoops down upon the derelict galleon like the kestrel upon the wild goose...." Click on image to enlarge.

"A lonely island; a long strip of coral sand with combing breakers bursting upon it; a shining mass of treasure poured out upon a sail-cloth spread upon a beach; a circle of hungry-eyed, wolfish, unshaven, partly clad figures gathered about in the sunlight; the pirate chief standing over the booty—counting, adding, subtracting, parcelling.

"So the treasure was divided...."

Click on either of the images above to enlarge.

Extorting Tribune from the Citizens.

"So the [pirates] returned to [Cartagena], which now lay entirely at their mercy without even the dim shadow of . . . authority as a protection. What followed need not be written in full; what they did may better be imagined than told. It is not said how long they remained, but it was long enough to hunt every odd corner for remnants of treasure that had been left behind. In the end, hearing further news of the approach of the Dutch and English fleet, they demanded a payment of 5,000,000 livres as the price of their departure without burning the town—and, incredible as it may sound, they got their price."

The Buccaneer was a Picturesque Fellow.

"The buccaneer was a picturesque fellow when you regard him from this long distance away. He belonged to no country and recognized no kith or kin of human nationality. He spent his money like a prince, and was very well satisfied to live rapidly, even if in so doing his death should come upon him with equal celerity. He clothed himself in a picturesque medley of rags, tatters, and finery. He loved gold and silver ornaments—ear-rings, finger-rings, bracelets, chains,—and he ornamented himself profusely with such gewgaws. He affected a great deal of finery of a sort—a tattered shirt or even a bare skin mattered not very much to him provided he was able to hide his semi-nakedness beneath some such finery as a velvet cloak or a sash of scarlet silk; patched breeches were not regarded when he had a fine leather belt with a silver buckle and a good sword hanging to it. And always there were a long-barrelled pistol or two and a good handy knife stuck in a waist-belt with which to command respect.

"Such was the buccaneer of the seventeeth century."

Click on images to enlarge.

Next: Howard Pyle: Captain Keitt, 1907

Howard Pyle: The True Captain Kidd, 1902

Factual information about pirates is scarce. Most stories and books about the rascals are based on the vivid imagination of their authors and some facts and dates gleaned from the few titles published at the time that pirates, such as William Kidd, were tried before judges, sentenced and convicted before being hanged in a public spectacle.

In Kidd's case, it took a jury all of 30 minutes to decide his fate, which was carried out at Execution Dock, London, on 12 May 1701, only three days after sentence was imposed.

John D. Champlin, Jr., the author of this seemingly accurate piece is also noted as co-author of a treatise on tiddlywinks, published in The Young Folks' Cyclopaedia of Games and Sports, by John D. Champlin Jr. and Arthur E. Bostwick, 1890. Click on image to enlarge detail of the drawing.

Pyle has drawn an imaginary portrait of William Kidd. The cold steely eyes make him a very scary creature, indeed. However, there is an article in the papers of author Thomas Janvier in Harvard's Houghton Library entitled Captain Kidd Not a Pirate written by the very same John D. Champlin, Jr. Could he have had a change of heart?

Click on this images and those below to enlarge.

The technique which Pyle used for these drawings appears to be some kind of pencil application. We know from Henry Pitz's book that he taught his students to draw with sharpened sticks of artist's charcoal on French charcoal paper, but this looks as if he might have used colored pencils on papers of various textures. Or the drawings could be reproductions of color lithographs. (Watercolor over charcoal would only cause problems unless an entire drawing was totally preserved by a fixative spray.) In any case, they are meticulously done and completely different from the pirate painting from The Fate of a Treasure Town that appeared in the first Howard Pyle post uploaded.

This has endured as one of Howard Pyle's most famous pirate images. It was the last illustration in this piece that appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for December 1902.

Next: More Pirates – Probably Howard Pyle's Best Illustrations

Howard Pyle: Sindbad on Burrator, 1902

The illustrations for this story by "Q," A.T. Quiller-Couch, which appeared in Scribner's Monthly Magazine for August 1902, are not milestones in Pyle's career so much as stepping stones. He and his wife had visited the island of Jamaica in 1889 where one can assume that he was dazzled by the intense light and dark shadows and the lush tropical landscape.

Click on image to enlarge. The quality of this print reproduction leaves much to be desired.

This chase scene on a tropical beach is the best of the lot, probably because Pyle had compiled some watercolor sketches and notes while on the Jamaica trip.

This was quite startling for the time, I believe, and probably influenced generations of magazine illustrators since it was first published. An enlarged section appears below.

Henry Pitz described Pyle's predicament his The Brandywine Tradition, first published in 1968:

"[Pyle] was usually happiest when he was providing pictures for his own texts. His contract with Harper, calling for three pictures a month, was his major source of income and gave him the necessary sense of financial security, but it had its treadmill aspects. There were times when he would have liked to have escaped its relentless demands. . . ."

This story is probably a case in point. The writer owes much to the style of Robert Louis Stevenson in a heavy-handed way, and one can imagine Pyle's impatience with the vivid text. In this illustration it seems that Pyle might have used the tropical plant to cover a foot he wasn't happy with and didn't bother to illustrate the description (which follows) of the Indian's face which he hid completely in deep black shadow.

"The man – a yellow-faced fellow but young in figure – muttered something in a gibberish new to me, and made as if excusing himself. It gave me an ugly start to see that his eyes were yellow too, with long slits for pupils; but I saw too that he was afraid of me, and being in a towering rage myself, I out with my kris.

" ' Now look here,’ I said; 'I don’t understand what you say, but maybe you understand this. Walk. And if I catch you here again, you’ll need someone to sew you up. . . .' "

Next: Howard Pyle's illustrations for The True Captain Kidd.