Delaware Art Museum shows rare Pyle murals
Aug 14, 2015 02:28PM ● By J. Chambless
Early in 1903, illustrator Howard Pyle
(1853-1911) began work on a set of nine wall-sized panels for the
drawing room of his home at 907 Delaware Avenue in Wilmington,
Del. The museum now has all nine panels on view in their entirety for the first time in 75 years. They
have been semi-permanently installed in the museum's second
floor Vinton Illustration Galleries.
While two of the
panels were on view during the Howard Pyle retrospective exhibition
in 2011-2012, which celebrated the museum's 100th anniversary, the
complete set has recently undergone conservation work. Thanks to a grant from the Marmot Foundation, the complete set of murals
has been conserved by Mark Bockrath of Barbara Buckley Associates in
preparation for display. The museum also received a gift from the
Starrett Foundation to install the panels. Although no pictures exist
of the original installation in Pyle's home, the new display is
designed to suggest a turn-of-the-century interior.
Pyle began work on the nine mural panels in 1903 during a time when the decoration of public buildings was a flourishing national trend. Within a few years, he devoted himself entirely to mural painting, traveling to Florence to study Renaissance examples. The murals on display at the museum represent Pyle's earliest known attempt in this genre, and were executed both for purposes of experimentation and in the hope of attracting work. To this end, Pyle was successful, receiving a commission to decorate the Minnesota State Capital building in 1906.
Two large
panels titled "The Genius of Art" and "The Genius of
Literature" celebrate the illustrator's expertise in bringing the
written word to visual life. In the first panel a female figure, clad
in semi-transparent draperies with two peacocks, leads a procession
of admiring followers. The scene is filled with movement and bright
color. The second of the two large panels depicts a somberly garbed
figure playing a classical lyre. Before her, a small group listens
attentively. Other panels augment this theme, with single figure
images of the muses of Drama and Music, as well as several decorative
scenes.
The murals remained in Pyle's Delaware Avenue home
until 1923, when they were removed from the walls by Professor
Pasquale Farina of Philadelphia. The murals were installed in an
exact replica of Pyle's drawing room with a marble mantelpiece and an
ornamental plaster ceiling in the new Wilmington Public Library. Due
to conservation challenges, they have remained in storage since the
time of their removal from the library.
Founded in 1912, the Delaware Art Museum is best known for its large collection of works by Wilmington native Howard Pyle and fellow American illustrators, a major collection of British Pre-Raphaelite art, and urban landscapes by John Sloan and his circle. It is located at 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, Del. For more information, call 302-571-9590 or 866-232-3714 (toll free), or visit the website at delart.org.