I had never heard of Ellen Pyle until a few months ago, after learning that the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington was exhibiting some of her original illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post.
For me, the Post meant Norman Rockwell or J.C. Leyendecker. At auction, I sometimes find Post collectible covers with drawings by Rockwell and a few others I had never heard of. But never Ellen Pyle, who was one of the few women illustrators in the 1920s and 1930s.
Who was this “woman?” And how had she been lost?
The museum exhibit -“Illustrating Her World: Ellen B.T. Pyle” – includes about 50 works, along with photographs, memorabilia and a video of the wedding of one of Pyle’s daughters. I went to the exhibit and was just wowed by her work – the realistic portrayals of her daughters and people in her community in Wilmington. Her paintings exuded a sense of warmth and familiarity that makes you feel like you know these people or someone like them. Which you probably do, since she painted ordinary people in their own real worlds.
The piece that struck me was of a black girl, a little tattered, holding a turkey. She was the daughter of Pyle’s cook and housekeeper, Mary Hunt, according to the museum docent and my research. Pyle drew it for the 1923 issue of the Post, but it was rejected by editor George Lorimer, who contended that “Post readers would not accept a black person depicted as the equal of a white person.” Lorimer identified the Post readership as “the average American,” and this little girl just didn’t fit that demographic.
Pyle reworked the illustration using a white boy for Children: A Magazine for Parents in November 1928.
The museum docent noted the difference between the two drawings, pointing out the intimacy of the drawing of the little girl, whom Pyle knew, and the little boy, whom she didn’t know. The painting of the little girl reminded me of the 1966 Norma Rockwell painting of Ruby Bridges being escorted to school by white federal marshals (that illustration appeared in Look magazine). You can see the picture of Pyle’s little girl on the website Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle, a look at her life and works by her great-granddaughter Katherine C. Smith.
Pyle, who was born in Philadelphia, illustrated 40 covers for the Post in the 1920s and 1930s. She was a student of artist Howard Pyle, and eventually married his brother. She discontinued her artwork to raise her four children in Wilmington but had to return to it after her husband died in 1919. Her first cover appeared in 1922.
In some of her most beautiful work, she used her three daughters as models, and you can see them grow up in her succession of illustrations. She showed them in scenes that were not perceived to be ladylike (as the docent noted) – gardening, holding a bow and arrow, and posing with hockey gear.
When researching Pyle, I came across a story from a 2007 Antiques Roadshow episode about a woman who appeared with an original painting of Pyle’s. The woman’s uncle gave it to her parents, she said, around 1938 or 1939 to hang over their fireplace. The auctioneer valued it between $25,000 and $35,000. It’s an illustration of an old woman with three children standing in front of a rainbow. The painting is part of the Delaware exhibit, and the models appear in other of Pyle’s paintings.
The museum exhibit continues through Jan. 3. If you’re nearby, you should stop by. And if you come across any of her covers or originals, hang on to them.
