[null, {"document_url": "https://howardpyle.blogspot.com/2010/02/howard-pyle-bookmark.html", "unformatted_src": "//3.bp.blogspot.com/_f3DbgZnnFiw/S4fc6uD_nKI/AAAAAAAAAmw/D3vqrrEjaGA/s400/Bookmark150webmedium.jpg", "src": "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f3DbgZnnFiw/S4fc6uD_nKI/AAAAAAAAAmw/D3vqrrEjaGA/s400/Bookmark150webmedium.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Bookmark webmedium", "rendered_width": 140, "rendered_height": 400}, null, {"document_url": "https://howardpyle.blogspot.com/2010/02/howard-pyle-bookmark.html", "unformatted_src": "//4.bp.blogspot.com/_f3DbgZnnFiw/S4fdAyInvTI/AAAAAAAAAm4/_sp-ACBZVE0/s400/Pyle1902AEBphoto.jpg", "src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f3DbgZnnFiw/S4fdAyInvTI/AAAAAAAAAm4/_sp-ACBZVE0/s400/Pyle1902AEBphoto.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Pyle AEBphoto", "rendered_width": 306, "rendered_height": 400}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "https://howardpyle.blogspot.com/2010/02/howard-pyle-bookmark.html", "unformatted_src": "//4.bp.blogspot.com/-1rPq7NCrb_Q/TrAUYTY8NuI/AAAAAAAABX8/4ZszxwPHSQg/s400/HPAMDcover.jpg", "src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1rPq7NCrb_Q/TrAUYTY8NuI/AAAAAAAABX8/4ZszxwPHSQg/s400/HPAMDcover.jpg", "formatted_filename": "HPAMDcover", "rendered_width": 154, "rendered_height": 200}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null]


A Howard Pyle Bookmark

I plan to write more in depth about Howard Pyle's involvement with To Have and To Hold, the novel by Mary Johnston, but until then, take a look at this odd scrap of Pylean ephemera... It's a promotional bookmark which Pyle executed in its entirety (and by that I mean he drew the picture and did the hand-lettering and the border). The portrait is in charcoal and it appears in the background of a 1902 photograph of Pyle taken by his student and sometime photographer, Arthur Ernst Becher (1877-1960). It was initially published in Art Interchange for January 1903. Becher, by the way, was a friend of Edward Steichen from their days in Milwaukee, and his photographs were shown in the first exhibition of the Photo-Secession (1902) and in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera-Work (October 1903).

And there's certainly something Steichenesque about this Pyle portrait - but perhaps I'm being superficial if it calls to mind Steichen's photo of Rodin: an artist in his studio (presumably) with an example of his work ethereally floating in the background - sort of like those "spirit" photos championed by Arthur Conan Doyle where an image of a dead loved one hovers around the portrait of a living person. Granted, this photograph of Pyle lacks the "mystery" and "atmosphere" of Steichen's Rodin, but still...
Posted by Ian Schoenherr at 9:45 AM Labels: ephemera, lettering, photograph, students

 Follow @ianschoenherr now showing... Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered University of Pennsylvania Press follow me Why Not Subscribe? Copyright © 2009-2017 by Ian Schoenherr