01 Work, The Art of War, Howard Pyle's A Wolf Had Not Been Seen at Salem for Thirty Years, with footnotes

Howard Pyle

A Wolf Had Not Been Seen at Salem for Thirty Years

Oil on canvas

Delaware Art Museum

Howard Pyle

Detail; A Wolf Had Not Been Seen at Salem for Thirty Years

Oil on canvas

Delaware Art Museum

Pyle’s image is rather sparse, between the snow and the cloudy sky he leaves the viewer’s eye to latch onto the people and the wolf. Your eye falls upon the people in the front, and the mix of fear and of the unknown is very strong here. Pyle creates his people, the landscape and even the tree with a sense of direction, all bringing your eye to the wolf.

Illustrators can really vary as to how they’d deal with a creature like the wolf.  But I think no amount of gore, or bared teeth or monstrous form are going to top Pyle’s wolf.  This is a creature of pure malevolence, and in Pyle’s subtlety he’s speaks volumes. 

He doesn’t need the over-the-top horror to make a striking figure.  Just the wolf’s bowed head, his menacing lean forward, his matted, dark fur against the white of the snow, all make it such a powerful darkness invading the light that the viewer can fill in the story themselves. More on this painting

Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was an American illustrator, painter, and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.

In 1894, he began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry (now Drexel University). After 1900, he founded his own school of art and illustration named the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. Scholar Henry C. Pitz later used the term Brandywine School for the illustration artists and Wyeth family artists of the Brandywine region, several of whom had studied with Pyle. He had a lasting influence on a number of artists who became notable in their own right; N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Thornton Oakley, Allen Tupper True, Stanley Arthurs, and numerous others studied under him.

His 1883 classic publication The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood remains in print, and his other books frequently have medieval European settings, including a four-volume set on King Arthur. He is also well known for his illustrations of pirates, and is credited with creating what has become the modern stereotype of pirate dress. He published his first novel Otto of the Silver Hand in 1888. He also illustrated historical and adventure stories for periodicals such as Harper's Magazine and St. Nicholas Magazine. His novel Men of Iron was adapted as the movie The Black Shield of Falworth (1954).

Pyle travelled to Florence, Italy in 1910 to study mural painting. He died there in 1911 of a sudden kidney infection. More on Howard Pyle

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