0402.Art Rocks: Yokoyama Taikan: 1868

 

0401.Art Rocks: Anton Mauve: 1838

 

0400.Art Rocks: Feyhaman Duran: 1886

 

Delaware Art Museum: Howard Pyle, American Illustrator

Across from the American Art galleries on the other side of the Fusco Grand Hall are another trio of galleries.  All are dedicated to the works of Wilmington native son, Howard Pyle.   Long before I discovered the range and genius of Mr. Pyle, I found a copy of one of his books, "Otto of the Silver Hand." It became one of my many real alouds to my fourth graders over the years.  In essence, it's the tale of a weak boy, ill suited for life in the world he finds himself, befriended by a gentle monk who teaches him to both know himself, and accept his destiny.  It's a little clunky, but it works as a serial read wonderfully well, and the illustrations by Pyle are sumptuous. 

From the wall information at the entrance to the first gallery:

"Howard Pyle--artist, writer, and teacher--was among America's most famous illustrators and storytellers.  He was born in Wilmington in 1853 and after three years of study in Philadelphia, he began his career in New York City in the late 1870s.  By 1879, when he established his studio in Wilmington, he had already sold a number of illustrations to leading magazines.  For the next thirty years, as Pyle worked in a rapidly expanding publishing industry, his lively stories and images of dashing pirates, valiant adventurers, and historic heroes reached millions of people.  His book and magazine illustrations, whether in color or black and white, still animate the written words of fiction, history, fantasy and romance.  Eloquent gestures and expressions, evocative lighting, picturesque settings, and theatrical compositions combine to create an expressive and emotional intensity.

"'Project your mind into your subject until you actually live it.  Make your pictures live.'  These words--spoken by Pyle to his students--convey his passion for the art of illustration, a passion he passed on to the generation of artists who have become known as the Brandywine school.  Today, illustrators, filmmakers, and animators still recognize and celebrate his lasting imprint on the nation's visual culture.

"After Pyle's death in 1911, the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, now the Delaware Art Museum, was founded to preserve and exhibit his works of art."

And there you have it, the raison d'etre of the Delaware Art Museum!

If you are unfamiliar with his work, you can surely recognize in it a certain Norman Rockwell sensibility; however, Pyle proceeds Rockwell by over a generation.  Pyle is the real deal.  He does indeed paint pirates!  And fairies, and Patriots...in his works, he's created the myth of America's founding along with all the other "myths" and fine tales of valor that he projects his optimistic mind into and brings to life on the canvas.

"Which Shall Be Captain?" 1911

from "The Buccaneers," by Don C. Seitz

January issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine, 1911

From the wall placard: "In the 1800s, as historians began to regard the age of piracy as over, pirates took hold of the popular imagination.  The drama of sea life, the romance of battle, and hte charm of the handsome outlaw came together in literary and visual art, creating a vision that survives today in popular idealized pirate images.

"Pyle's painting appeared with the poem "The Buccaneers," which chronicles a fight over unearthed treasure.  Observing the combat is a pirate crew described by the poet as "ragged, scarred, haggard and lean."  Through dressed for the part, several seem like humorous caricatures rather than desperate criminals."

"Eileen slipped the ring into the nest" 1904

from "The Carming of Estercel," by Grace Rhys

June issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine, 1904

"An Attack on a Galleon" 1905

from "The Fate of a Treasure Town," by Howard Pyle

December issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine, 1905

Of the three galleries comprising this aspect of the museum's collection, perhaps the most interesting is actual the one filled with monochromatic works (Black and White).  In so many ways, it's a lost art today.

"Another rush of breakers pitching the boat, corklike into the air" 1900

from "A Life for a Life," by Howard Pyle

January issue of Scribner's Magazine, 1900

"Bringing in the May" 1884

from "A May-Day Idyl of the Olden Time," by Howard Pyle

May issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1884

from "The Garden Behind the Moon: A Real Story of the Moon Angel," 

by Howard Pyle, 1895

In 1889, Howard and Anne Pyle's oldest child, Sellers, died unexpectedly from an illness at home while they were in the Caribbean, where the artist was researching locales for his pirate illustrations. Six years later, Pyle wrote and illustrated this tale as a gift to the memory of Sellers. 

It is the story of David, a young boy whose imaginary journey takes him from his earthly life to a place beyond the moon and back again.  Among his adventures, David learns to polish stars for the Moon Angel, tames a winged horse, defeats an evil giant, and wins the hand of a princess.  The character David is a reflection of Sellers, and Pyle described his lost son as "a noble little fellow of six years old...and...a child of deep mind and noble generosity of character."

"The Burning Ship" 1898

December issue of Collier's Weekly, 1904

[The illustration was printed as a full page image without any association to a text]

Take a moment and compare it to the other image of the Pirate Galleon painted in full color.  

0399.Art Rocks: Cordelia Urueta: 1908

Delaware Art Museum: The Gilded Age in America

The final gallery in this small trio of American Art, is a space filled with works under the title The Gilded Age.  Quick history refresher, the Gilded Age is loosely defined as a period of time after the Civil War starting around 1870 and lasting until 1900.  It's marked by the rapid rise of the industrial economic power-base in the upper mid-west and north east, as well as, a few areas along the west coast.  Titans of industry like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Ford, and a couple of dozen other luminaries of the age built a fore to unimaginable wealth.  An interesting ancillary to this directly impacted the fortunes of artists.  In an attempt to "give back," the noblesse oblige, many built collections of art and patronize artists, turning their collections into landmark art museums, and the artists they patronized into representatives of their vocation and today bell weathers of the quality and completeness of museum collections.

One of the reasons that I love this room is that I find so many of the artists I have come to know and love represented there.

One wall is hung in the salon style with many works of many sizes and various subject matter.  A beautiful sculpture "dances" in the middle of the room.  Of all the works on this wall, most that I've seen so many times before, I found myself zeroing in on one of the least of these by square footage!  It's a sweet little composition by the artist Albert Pinkham Ryder.  His paintings were created in such a way that they appear to be "thick" with pigment and varnish, as well as, filled with little fractures across the surface.  I seem to remember that it was the result of his lack of technique or chosen materials or a confluence of both.  The Phillips Collection in DC (one of those noblesse oblige industrialist who turned his actual home into a museum) has one of his nocturnes on display, and it was my point of entry into the works of this artist.  

"By the Tomb of the Prophet" after 1882

Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917)

Another wall features a monumental work on framed wood panels with an illustrators design sense.  I confess, I failed to jot down the credits, but it's just too lovely a piece not to share.

This detail from the right side demonstrates the romantic theme, it could be Shakespeare inspired, or some other writer of note.  I just don't recognize the source of the text.

Opposite is a wall containing a more conservatively hung group of landscape/seascape paintings.  Among them is a George Inness--I love George Inness, but I did not focus on his work this time.  In stead, let's begin with a painting by a regionalist of limited renown.  William Anderson Coffin's depiction of the coming night across the Somerset Valley in west central Pennsylvania.  A personal connection for me is the fact that two to three times a year throughout my youth my family would drive through this valley between our home in Michigan and my paternal grandparent's home in the panhandle of Maryland.  Beyond that, it's just a lovely deceptively simple work of art.

"Evening, Somerset Valley, Pennsylvania" circa 1898

William Anderson Coffin (1855-1925)

The text on the placard reads: "This work--a picture of the landscape near Coffin's farm in Jennerstown, Pennsylvania--won Coffin a silver medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 in Saint Louis."  Not much to go on.  Perhaps it was the apex of his artistic career...

Finally, I will highlight a work by my favorite American impressionist, John Henry Twachtman.  He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He studied under a couple of the great American artist/teachers Frank Duveneck and William Merritt Chase.  Soon, he was studying in and painting in various schools and places across Europe from Munich to Venice to Paris, but he left the continent and settle in back in the states in Connecticut where he both painted and mentored younger artists.  He died relatively young, just before his 50th birthday of a stroke.  What I love about his version of impressionism is it's stark, hinting toward a minimalist vision of the subject.  His paintings are pristine.  They seem to hold only the essence of a moment, taut and gentle and zen.

"Sea Scene" 1893

John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902)

Delaware Art Museum: 19th Century American Gallery

Moving clockwise from the first gallery with colonial era portraits, you enter a room with perhaps 8 medium to larger works and a two "sculptures".  Probably, the most recognizable artist is Frederick Edwin Church with one of his voluptuous South American landscapes full of details and Hudson School artist surprises.  I think the modern popularity of I Spy books for children can find it's lineage all the way back to artists like Church.  Another gem is a portrait of Port Louis, the capitol of the island of Mauritius. No fault if you have no idea where Mauritius is (the middle of the Indian Ocean!), I have a personal connection.  For many years I taught with a gifted colleague whose parents were born on Mauritius and has many family members who still call this little drop of paradise home.

I've shared these with you before after previous visits.  This time let's look as a couple of other works found here, shall we?

The first is a work by John Rogers (1824-1904) called "Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations" from 1865.  It is a plaster cast over painted.  I think these sort of things were a poor man's entree into own a piece of "art".  My grandmother had one of a domestic scene before a hearth painted bronze.  I remember being fascinated by it.  Somewhere between her move from Maryland to my parents home in Michigan, it was lost.  I wonder if my father sold it.  I was away at college, and he had no appreciation for such things... but I digress.

The accompanying placard reads: The earliest catalogue [sic] of Rogers' work, published in 1866, described the subject of this statuette: "A Southern lady, with her little boy, compelled by hunger, is reluctantly taking the of allegiance from a Union officer, in order to draw rations."  With the Civil War just ended and the course of Reconstruction under debate, the theme was timely and the sculpture warmly received.

Where the hell do you even begin?  Only the quoted section comes from the 1866 document, the rest was the curator's interpretation.  I'm sure the work was warmly received.  She's destitute, well not according to her dress, but she is hungry, right?  And what's up with young black boy?  He's clearly the impoverished one with his torn clothes, yet he's holding the basket.  Is he still enslaved to the white lady, dependent upon her?  Or is he there to help the union soldier distribute rations?  And is this ambiguity meant to appeal to both sides?  A sort of savvy marketing ploy on the part of the artist.  A master's thesis could be written on this little plaster cast sitting in the corner of this gallery in this little regional art museum in the unassuming city of Wilmington, Delaware.  If you don't find art museums interesting, it's really on you, dude.

The second work I've chosen to highlight is by Robert Walter Weir (1803-1889), and I'll be honest with you, I don't think I've ever seen anything else this artist has ever done.  Yet, it is technically a beautifully executed painting in the genre of history paintings.  An artist I need to do more research on.
The painting is titled "Indian Captives, Massachusetts, 1650" and yes, we've just waded in another quagmire!  But let us remember, that art is not the problem.  Art is a window to a conversation about the problem, a marker, a moment in time, and catalyst for understanding, revelation, and growth.  That was my PC shpiel!  I believe it, I do.  But let begin with what's wrong.

And here we again look to the placard's description: Despite its evocative title, "Indian Captives, Massachusetts, 1650," has not been connected to a specific historic event.  The date of 1650 situates the scene within a time of unrest in New England between English, French, and Dutch settlers and Native American tribes.  During armed conflicts in this era, hundreds of Indians were taken captive and sold into slavery.  In addition, Anglo-European settlers were abducted, and tales of captivity were widely published.  The body language in this painting may indicate a negotiation in progress between the standing figure and the seated, but armed, man.

Okay.  Well, there's a lot of balance there.  But let's be honest, this NEVER HAPPENED.  It is a well orchestrated fiction meant to create a sense of "it was bad, but not that bad."   And "Europeans had the upper hand, but we weren't domineering, and we were certainly sympathetic."  As long as we keep this in mind, we are ready to look at the particulars conveyed by the artist.  Oh!  And one other curious depiction--the Native American.  It's like a white Jesus.  The guy could have come out of central casting--seems like the image was created in the mind of the artist because he'd never met a Native American.  He's not alone.  This is how stereotypes are created and perpetuated.  We all do it.

Yet, no matter how much picking away at the details of the painting we choose to make, and no matter how much grace we decide to convey upon the attempts to portray the Native Americans are dignified, human, even noble--the artist got one thing right.

Held somewhat inconspicuously in the hand of the Anglo-European solder is a key.  It's not lost on the form of the Native American--he's clearly looking at it, too.  Europeans hold the key to the survival of his people.  They held it then, and we still hold it today.

Pity the folk who find art museums boring.  They just don't look.