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American Illustration
In the nineteenth century, Americans viewed more illustration than they did any other art form. By mid-century, America's burgeoning middle class, coupled with nearly universal elementary education, led to an increased interest in periodicals. By the end of 1850, the combined circulation of the most famous illustrated weeklies, Ballou's Pictorial, Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, exceeded a quarter of a million copies per week. Over the next two decades, the number of periodical titles produced in the United States more than quadrupled, from 700 to 3300.
The Library
Elizabeth Shippen Green
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Saturday Evening Post Cover
C. Coles Phillips
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Harper's February
Edward Penfield
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Mid-century newspaper and magazine illustration was dependent upon the transformation of an artist's drawing into a wood block engraving by an intermediary craftsman. Rarely did illustrators also do their own wood-carving. As readership and publication volume increased, so too did the need for talented artists to provide the drawings to be turned into wood engraved illustrations. Many artist-illustrators became famous: Thomas Nast, Winslow Homer, Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Charles Dana Gibson and Maxfield Parrish.
Between the 1870s and 1900, technological developments in the reproduction processes allowed for greater naturalism in the illustrators' images-reproducing line, shade and color with greater ease and accuracy. By the mid-1880s wood block engravings ceased to be produced. Advances in color printing and photomechanical reproduction soon revolutionized the quality of images it would be possible to produce in the pages of the popular press.
The Silver Slipper
John Held, Jr.
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Back to School Again
Jessie Wilcox Smith
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Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
John Sloan
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Until that time most illustrators had learned their craft on the job as staff artists for newspapers and magazines. In 1894 Howard Pyle recognized the need for thoroughly trained illustrators and began to teach at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, where he remained until 1900. By 1895 Pyle had also established his own schools in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and in Wilmington, Delaware.
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