“An Attack on a Galleon,” Howard Pyle, 1905. Oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches Delaware Art Museum, Museum Purchase, 1912

Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered, organized by the Delaware Art Museum, is the first comprehensive, critical assessment of the influential artist who is often referred to as the grandfather of American illustration.

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When Howard Pyle died in 1911, he left behind an extensive body of over 3,000 works of art and a lasting legacy of inspired teaching. This exhibition features an outstanding selection of the artist’s best known and rarely seen paintings, drawings, prints, and archival materials that shed light on the artist’s career as a painter and a consummate storyteller in a changing world at the cusp of the 20th century. Admired by Norman Rockwell and his contemporaries, Pyle’s exacting working methods resulted in the creation of artworks of singular beauty and refinement with innovative compositional structures. His extraordinary skill was strengthened by his conviction that illustration was an act of self revelation, and he encouraged students like N.C. Wyeth, Jessie Willcox Smith, and Frank Schoonover to understand their subjects by living them. The artist’s powerful paintings of pirates and historical and literary themes continue to spark the imagination, as reflected in the works on view.

About Howard Pyle: www.delart.org/collections/pyle_illus

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