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Howard Pyle and the American
Renaissance
March 17 - May 20, 2007
In the 1880s, the
term "American Renaissance" was generated to describe a new spirit
in the arts that began with the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia
and continued into the early 20th century. This broad
movement sought to link the old world with the new and lift America out
of provincialism. While historical accuracy was valued, artists reinterpreted
the past to fit contemporary themes. Architecture, arts and crafts, and
literature demonstrated an eclectic mix of European Renaissance, medieval
art, and Greek and Roman influences. (right: Howard Pyle (1853-1911),
A Dream of Young Summer (1901), oil on canvas, illustration for Edith
M. Thomas, "A Dream of Young Summer," Harper's Monthly
(June 1901), private collection.)
The American Renaissance was among a number of ideological
and aesthetic trends that influenced the illustrative work of Howard Pyle
(1853-1911). Believing that illustration was a springboard for painting
and a means for cultivating public taste, Pyle created many classically
inspired works for publication in the popular magazines of the day.
Howard Pyle and the American Renaissance, on view March 17 through May 20, 2007 at the Brandywine River Museum,
provides a focused look at selected Howard Pyle works that demonstrate his
use of history as dramatic, illustrative documentaries with inventive and
symbolic intent.
Works on view include examples of ink illustrations for
Pyle's books, The Wonder Clock (1888) and The Story of King Arthur
and His Knights (1903), noted for their rich visual detail, elegance
of design, and imaginative use of pen technique. Also featured are illustrations
for William Dean Howell's Stops of Various Quills (1895); The
Eclogues of Virgil (1904); paintings for Quo Vadis (1897); Renaissance
Couple (1902), an oil on copper; A Dream of Young Summer (1901),
a painting dedicated to Augustus Saint Gaudens; and Why Seek Ye the Living
Among the Dead? (1905), inspired by Saint Gaudens' figure of Victory
for the Sherman Monument in Manhatten's Grand Army Plaza.
Selected works by Pyle's contemporaries, the important
artists Edwin Austin Abbey, George Maynard, Will H. Low, Robert Frederick
Blum, Francis Davis Millet, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Kenyon Cox are included
because of their associations with Pyle and American illustration.
The Delaware Art Museum and the Brandywine River Museum
have recently jointly purchased a major painting by Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
titled, Richard de Bury Tutoring Young Edward III, an oil on canvas
completed in 1903. This important work is included in Howard Pyle and
the American Renaissance.
Wall Text for the exhibition
-
- Late-nineteenth-century American artists, writers, and
architects believed their era was a second Renaissance. They viewed their
country as the culmination of past cultures from which they could appropriate
freely in order to develop America's distinct artistic identity. Classical
styles of Greece and Rome and the arts of the Italian Renaissance were
their standard, but the art of other cultures and historical periods was
also assimilated into the panoply of American culture.
-
- Architects and artists envisioned large monuments and
public buildings decorated by murals and sculptures intended to personify
American achievements or cultural ties to the past. Major cities had public
building programs and lavish expositions. The World's Columbian Exposition
in Chicago was an eclectic mix of cultural associations: Viking ships and
architectural recreations of Imperial Rome, Renaissance Florence, eighteenth-century
Paris, and Asian palaces. The wealthy built homes in the styles of Tudor
castles, Italianate palazzos, Georgian mansions, and French chateaux. Painters
played leading roles as tastemakers by designing both public and private
projects.
-
-
- The country's nationalism and desire to depict the beautiful
and noble is evident in the following comments by various artists and writers
of the time:
-
- Henry James, author:
- ". . .it seems to me that we are ahead of the European
races in the fact that more than either of them [sic] we can deal freely
with forms of civilization not only our own, can pick and choose and assimilate
and in short (aesthetically and culturally) claim our property wherever
we find it." (Quoted from the early correspondence of Henry James
published in Leon Edel, Henry James: 1843-1870: The Untried Years,
Philadelphia: 1953)
- John La Farge, artist:
- "We are not as they are-fixed in some tradition;
and we can go where we choose-to the greatest influences, if we wish, and
still be free for our future." (Quoted from John La Farge, "The
American Academy at Rome," Scribner's Magazine, August 1900)
-
- Stanford White, architect:
- "'In the past, dominant nations had always plundered
works of art from their predecessors. . . America was taking a leading
place among nations and had, therefore, the right to obtain art where ever
[sic] she could.'" (Quoted in Lawrence G. White, Sketches and Designs
by Stanford White (New York: 1920)
-
- G. W. Prothero, author
- "It cannot be doubted that much that is ugly and
narrow, prejudiced and vulgar in our every day life, might be purged away
by. . . a little wholesome Hellenism." from "A Greek Play at
Cambridge," The Century Magazine, July 1884)
-
-
-
- Myths
-
- Myths and legends from antiquity have long been resources
for Western art and literature because they provide universal themes and
symbols. This trend was true in the late nineteenth-century. In addition,
artists sought to depict myths and allegories from a realistic viewpoint,
as if the events actually happened.
-
- Classical imagery and lore were applied not only to painting,
drawing, and sculpture but also to decorative arts and printed matter.
Even children's books and popular magazines featured ancient stories, sometimes
re-casting gods and goddesses into nineteenth-century characters and settings.
One such example is "Sappho," published in Harper's December
1877 that retells the Roman story of the Greek female poet as an independent-minded
modern woman.
-
- Howard Pyle created illustrations for the mythic tales
in James Baldwin's The Golden Age (1887), and Nathaniel Hawthorne's
A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys and Tanglewood Tales (1900). Baldwin
and Hawthorne believed their modern interpretations were improvements on
ancient tales. Likewise, Pyle's characters have individuality, and settings
that reflect a locale more familiar than Greek or Italian geography.
-
-
- Symbols of the Age
-
- Many of Pyle's illustrations for poetry or enigmatic
tales made use of images derived from classical antiquity or the Renaissance
in Europe. These show Pyle's -- and the entire period's -- affinity for
themes about life, death, love, and spirituality. Figures with wings, laurel
leaf crowns, and flowing drapery, who strum Greek lyres, play pipes, or
sound trumpets, personify these themes. American artists varied the degree
of realistic or imaginary characteristics they applied to such imagery.
Pyle seldom created works in the style of academic realism. He preferred
to render forms with simplified realism or from imagination
-
-
- Artists as Historians
-
- Late nineteenth-century American society had great faith
in science and the concept of progress. As a result, artists of the American
Renaissance were diligent in pursuing historical accuracy in their work.
Their academic interest led them to collect historical costumes and other
objects and to assemble personal reference libraries. They viewed the past
as a vast encyclopedia. They studied the development of their own nation
and expanded their study into other, diverse civilizations and eras.
- Pyle's special interest in American colonial history
was a direct expression of American Renaissance ideals. He developed expertise
on colonial costumes and life and became well known for historical accuracy
in his work.
-
-
- The Collaborative Spirit
-
- While working to establish himself as an illustrator
in New York during the late 1870s, Howard Pyle became part of a social
and professional network of artists including Edwin Austin Abbey, William
Merritt Chase, Frank Millet, Walter Shirlaw, Julian Alden Weir, Charles
Stanley Reinhart, Carroll Beckwith, George Inness, Frederick Church, Swain
Gifford, and many others. A number of these artists were both illustrators
and painters. With talents as an illustrator and writer, Pyle held strong
beliefs about illustration's power not only to educate the public but also
to produce better painters. Nonetheless, he kept informed of aesthetic
and thematic trends in fine art, selectively applying those that met his
criteria for illustration.
-
- After Pyle left New York in 1880 to establish a studio
and home in Wilmington, Delaware, he maintained professional and social
connections to artists and writers. His correspondence covered business
matters, philosophical ideas, occasional trading of art works, or discussion
of compositional ideas. In fact, the period of the American Renaissance
stimulated comradeship and collaboration among artists on a large scale,
unlike any other period in American art history.
-
- Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Pyle corresponded between
1880 and 1905, sharing information about historic costumes and observations
on art. Pyle considered Saint-Gauden's Sherman Monument (1903) in
New York City's Central Park to be a masterpiece and based his painting
Why Seek Ye the Living Among the Dead (1905) on the figure of Victory.
Saint-Gaudens and Pyle periodically exchanged art. Pyle sent his painting
A Dream of Young Summer with a dedication to the sculptor, and also
gave Saint-Gaudens an ink illustration for Edwin Markham's poem "The
Song of Peace." In return, Saint-Gaudens gave Pyle a plaster study
of the head of Victory and a bronze medallion memorializing Robert
Louis Stevenson.
-
-
- Renaissance Men
-
- Artists of the American Renaissance regarded the classical
past as the supreme model for all Western art. They praised its control,
perfection, nobility and eternal qualities. Europe's cultural rebirth and
revival of the antique during the fourteenth to sixteenth-century set an
example for Americans of how adoption of the images and methods of another
age could express the current one. American artists emulated the Renaissance
art of Italy in low-relief styles of sculpture and in decorative mural
painting. Due to America's English heritage and literature, Americans were
also drawn to the English Renaissance. Shakespeare's plays, as well as
England's royalty, history, and rural character, were explored by many
artists but most notably by Edwin Austin Abbey, Francis Millet, and Edwin
Blashfield.
-
- The "Renaissance man" of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Europe was versed in many subjects. American artists, exercising their
talents in many fields, recognized that they could have a significant influence
on American taste and culture. Artists not only produced paintings, drawings,
and sculpture, but they also wrote articles and books, taught and lectured,
created murals, etched and engraved, founded societies, and organized exhibitions.
They advised city planners, industrialists, and wealthy landowners on architectural
projects, and designed stained glass, ceramic tiles, book covers, furniture,
interiors, and even currency.
-
- At the height of his career, Pyle was an illustrator,
author, teacher and lecturer, collector, muralist, historical consultant,
and designer of theatrical costumes, bookplates, stained glass, and other
objects. Pyle's expertise in illustration called on his personal interest
in colonial history, medieval tales, pirates, and mystical themes that
utilized classical figures and symbols.
-
- In 1903, Pyle was commissioned by the Bibliophile Society
of Boston, of which he was a member, to illustrate Thomas Frognall Dibden's
The Bibliomania or Book Madness, History, Symptoms, and Cure of this
Fatal Disease. Pyle created five paintings: Caxton at his Press,
Roger Bacon, Erasmus Reading to Colet and More,
Izaak Walton, and Richard De Bury and the Young Edward III.
All except Richard de Bury. . .were reproduced in etchings by William
Bicknell for the publication. Nonetheless, all of the images were issued
as etchings for members of the Bibliophile society.
-
-
- The American Renaissance Ends
-
- Americans flocked to Europe for artistic training during
the 1880s and 1890s. Pyle resisted this temptation, believing that American
artists should not rely on contemporary European models. He mistrusted
works that emphasized technique, believing that technique was a means to
an end but not an end in itself. As a teacher, he believed illustration
would train students to become better painters.
-
- In Pyle's last years, he realized that illustration was
increasingly controlled by commercial interests and that the American Renaissance
imagery and aesthetics had begun to wane in favor of an entirely aesthetically-driven
international style. He, like many of illustrators of his generation, turned
to mural painting, admiring the murals' potential to both decorate and
"illustrate" historical or allegorical narratives. His first
commission was from the architect Cass Gilbert to paint the "Battle
of Nashville" for the Minnesota State Capitol. Other commissions followed
including the Essex County Court House in Newark, New Jersey, and the Hudson
County Court House in Jersey City. However, Pyle felt shortcomings as a
mural painter. Thus, he resolved, after many years of resistance, to go
to Italy and study the old masters. Once there, he revised his negative
opinions of European art and its influence. Although his untimely death
in Florence denied him fruition of his plans for mural painting, his Italian
experience had reinforced his determination to maintain a bridge between
illustration and painting.
-
- "For if we substitute a small flat decorated space
- for a very large flat decorated space there is not
- such a vast difference between the best book
- illustration and a mural painting."
-
- (Howard Pyle to W. M. R. French, April 20, 1905, as quoted
in
- Charles D. Abbott, Howard Pyle, A Chronicle, New
York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1921)
-
- Both American and European artists of the nineteenth-century
sought to recapture the spirit of ancient times. Artists who studied archeological
and historical references were conscious of the educational and aesthetic
effect such details brought to their art. Their care and attention is exemplified
by paintings displayed here using exedras, a type of outdoor seating originating
in Greek architecture.
-
-
- Artists as Historians
-
- Late-nineteenth-century American artists viewed the past
as a vast encyclopedia. Realism and accuracy in rendering historical details
was important and led them to collect historical costumes and other objects,
and to assemble personal reference libraries. However, it was just as important
not to include what were considered "vulgar details." The age
preferred to create a kind of realism that presented a poetic, idealized
view of life.
-
- Although the American Renaissance was at first inspired
by the Italian Renaissance, artists expanded their study into diverse civilizations
and eras, including the development of their own nation. Pyle's special
interest in American colonial history was a direct expression of American
Renaissance ideals. He developed expertise on colonial costumes and life
and became well known for historical accuracy in his work.
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