Woman Carrying Urn

Wilmington, Delaware, 1903. Original mixed media illustration by American illustrator Howard Pyle (1853-1911) for The Calendar of Famous Artists 1904, published for the benefit of the Chester County Hospital in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Pyle’s drawing is the featured image for February. Framed by bare trees and a red sunset, a young woman strides across a winter landscape, balancing an urn on her shoulder. Her flowing skirt and hair play off the curving branches and clouds, while two black crows at her feet mark her path. Pyle delicately plays with color within the otherwise monochromatic composition, carrying the red of the horizon to her lips and the details of her dress, softening it in the amber blush of the urn. Golden Age illustrators like Pyle, Maxfield Parrish, and N. C. Wyeth embraced calendar illustration as a reliable source of income. Their calendar art hung in millions of homes, shops, and offices, reaching a much wider audience than their work for books and magazines, even if that commercial exposure sometimes undermined their critical reputations. In addition to Pyle, The Calendar of Famous Artists featured art by a number of regional painters associated with the Brandywine School: Alice Barber Stephens, Sarah S. Stilwell [Weber], William Merritt Chase, and Cecilia Beaux, all of whom trained or taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Drexel Institute, or the newly founded Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. The progressive publisher of The Calendar of Famous Artists, Martha Binney Dunning, was a supporter of women’s rights who would later serve on the Board of Directors of Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League. Catalogue: PDPI0063 (image), PM1319 (calendar). See Paul Preston Davis, Howard Pyle: His Life - His Work (2004). Provenance: private collection, Pennsylvania. An evocative original illustration by the founder of the Brandywine School. Mixed media, primarily charcoal and gouache, on paper, measuring 30.5 x 18 inches, signed “Pyle” at lower right. Archivally restored and framed to 30.5 x 19 inches. Accompanied by color-printed cover of The Calendar of Famous Artists 1904 and color-printed calendar page for February, both measuring 16 x 11.5 inches. (Inventory #: 1004036)