Howard Pyle, a chronicle by Charles D. Abbott, with an introduction by N. C. Wyeth and many illustrations from Howard Pyle's works.

HOWARD PYLE: A CHRONICLE
education, which, excellent as it is, does not lend itself to
the fulfillment of a characteristic American Art.
"Such an art is not one that can be built up in a few years;
it must, to my mind, be a growth in which the -technique
of picture-making adapts itself to the needs of the case, and
I do not believe that the accumulation of a marvellous
technical facility which our American artists acquire abroad
tends to a corresponding increase either of originality
or imagination. I rather think it tends to subordinating originality and imagination to technical methods of
painting....
To W. M. R. French.
"April 13, 1905.
It may be well for me to state that in general my
opinion is that pictures are creations of the imagination and
not of technical facility, and that that which art students most
need is the cultivation of their imagination and its direction
into practical and useful channels of creation-and I hold
that this is exactly in line with all other kinds of professional education, whether of law, finance, medicine, or
physics. I would not belittle the necessity of accurate
technical training. I insist upon that in my own school even
more strenuously than it is insisted upon in the great art
schools of the country; but I subordinate that technical
training entirely to the training of the imagination.,
To Dr. James H. Can field of Columbia University.
"April 1 7, 1905.
This winter I have been lecturing in New York,
as you know, every two weeks, and have thus come some[ 222 ]