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
could carelessness be urged by the most exacting critic;
nineteen books, and many uncollected short stories;i fourteen
mural paintings, not to mention a number of book plates and
several excellent easel-paintings; all these were the productions of something less than thirty-four years, during
which time he read voluminously, and devoted himself
passionately to his family. His whole life was a record of
industry which can be matched but rarely in the annals of
American art and letters. But in 1910 the strain began to
tell. He was ill when he reached Italy, and at no time
during his year's residence there did he regain the robust
health which he had always enjoyed up to that time. His
spirit was depressed; he was incapable of the enthusiasm
which had been one of the outstanding characteristics of his
nature. Suffering as he was, he could see Italy only
through the veil of his own illness. It is, therefore, not
surprising that he was not so overwhelmingly impressed
with the ancient country as one would expect an artist of
his temperament, keenly alive to the beauty of the past,
to be. It is, on the whole, a great tribute to his appreciation that in northern Italy he found so many things which
could move him to admiration.
Extracts from some of the letters to various of his Wilmington pupils will give in sufficient detail the tenor of his
life in Italy:
To Stanley Artizurs from Florence.
"December 16, i910.
I have been knocked up with a bilious attack or a
stomach attack or something of the kind, and have had a
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