He attended the Friends' School in Wilmington and later T. Clarkson Taylor's small private school. Always surrounded by good literature with the best artwork available, Pyle learned to appreciate the book's total format. He later confessed, "In confidence, I still like the pictures in books better than wall pictures." Since the Pyle family could not afford to send Pyle to Europe to study art, he went to Philadelphia in 1869 to study with an elderly Dutch gentleman, F. A. Van der Wielen. Thus, Pyle, with his exclusively American training, broke the tradition which dictated that artists study abroad.
After almost three years of training with Van der Wielen, Pyle returned home and worked with his father in the family's leather business. He might have remained in this business had he not traveled to the Chincoteague Islands in 1876 and, consequently, written an illustrated story about the trip which was accepted by Scribner's Monthly. One of the magazine's owners, Roswell Smith, urged him to come to New York City, and Pyle accepted the challenge that launched his career as a graphic artist.
In 1877 illustrations and short tales by Pyle appeared in Harper's Weekly and the juvenile magazine St.
This is a free page. This page contains 186 words. This
biography contains 6,172 words (approx. 21 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Howard Pyle Access Pass.
