Pyle’s Students
Galleries 13 & 14
Brock J. Vinton Galleries
Howard Pyle began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia in the fall of 1894. (He had first offered to teach his course at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts but was turned down because illustration art was not considered important enough for their fine arts curriculum.) Pyle had a natural talent for instruction, teaching his students to use their imaginations along with their skills. Among his students at Drexel were Stanley Arthurs, Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Eleanore Plaisted Abbott, Violet Oakley, Bertha Corson Day, and Maxfield Parrish.
In 1898, Pyle offered his strongest students an intensive summer of study with funds provided by the Drexel Institute at his family’s property in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. This summer program ran for only five years, but it fueled Pyle’s decision to open his own art school. In 1900, Pyle resigned from Drexel and opened a school housed in studios adjacent to his own in Wilmington. Between 1900 and 1905, Pyle carefully selected his students. In this rarified atmosphere, Pyle honed the skills of such major illustrators as Frank Schoonover, N. C. Wyeth, Ethel Pennewill Brown, Thornton Oakley, Olive Rush, Harvey Dunn, and Gayle Porter Hoskins. |
