The Lady of Shalott by Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
Miriam Neuringer
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Published in Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott (1881)
Unknown method of mechanical reproduction on paper, 7 1/2 x 6 inches. (19 x 15.2 cm.)
Lent by the Newberry Library, Chicago.
Howard Pyle, who was born in Wilmington, Delaware, attended art classes in Philadelphia between 1869 and 1871 and then moved to New York City in 1876 to study painting and illustration. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art he became aquainted with the prints of Hogarth and the early German masters, especially Diirer, whose command of decorative line greatly influenced Pyle. In 1877 he began his career as an illustrator with contributions to Harper's Weekly and St. Nicholas, the leading American periodical for children. Two years later, having firmly established himself as an illustrator, he moved back to Wilmington, where he continued to work for many publications based in New York, and by the mideighties Pyle had achieved a major reputation. Van Gogh, for example, mentioned him in a letter to his brother Theo.' In November 1910 he journeyed abroad for the first time; he died in Florence one year later.
In 1881 Dodd, Mead and Company commissioned Pyle to illustrate with color drawings two small children's books, The Lady of Shalott and Yankee Doodle. These projects, the first entire volumes that he illus- trated, were among the earliest American experiments in color-printed books for children. Pyle attempted to em- ulate the flat color printing of the well-known English publisher Edmund Evans, who produced works illustrated by Walter Crane and other popular English artists. Pyle was displeased with his two pioneering at- tempts because their quality did not match that of Evans's publications; and although the artist thought that Yankee Doodle had a somewhat provincial charm, he believed his illustrated Lady of Shalott a total failure. Its fluid Art Nouveau style, adopted because of its popularity in England, does not represent his style in illustration well.
The work seen in this exhibition illustrates the same lines of Tennyson's poem earlier chosen by Hunt. Pyle's illustration, which is less powerful than Hunt's Moxon engraving, has neither Hunt's imaginative power nor his supernatural atmosphere, in part because Pyle did not design a single image for the poem but more than forty different ones. Although this plate adheres closely to the text, it has significant inconsistencies, chief of which is the location of the mirror. The exploding glass, which flies toward the Lady, suggests that the mirror hangs upon the wall adjacent to the window. Such a location of course makes impossible the Lady's viewing in the mirror either the visage of Sir Lancelot or the world that she must dutifully record.
References
Lanathen, Richard M. :Forward." The Brandywine Heritage Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania: Brandywine River Museum, 1971.
Neuringer, Miriam. Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts, Ed. George P. Landow. Brown University: 1985. p. 137.
Tennyson, Alfred. The Lady of Shalott New York: Dodd, Mead, 1881.
Last modified 16 December 2006