Howard Pyle’s The Battle of Bunker Hill
by Amanda Nesci
In January 2019, the Museum received a generous gift made by Kent D. and Tina K. Worley. This collection spans the breadth of material culture from and about the Revolutionary Era, including military and tavern-related artifacts, art, documents, and maps.
Howard Pyle
The Battle of Bunker Hill
Print, 6 7/16 x 9 3/8 in
Fraunces Tavern Museum, TR2019.01.014. Gift of Kent D. and Tina K. Worley
This print of Howard Pyle's The Battle of Bunker Hill—torn from an 1898 volume of Scribner's Magazine—was commissioned to accompany the publication of Henry Cabot Lodge's "The Story of the Revolution," depicting the first major battle of the American Revolution fought during the Siege of Boston in 1775. Although the British won the battle, it resulted in devastating casualties for the British army and encouraged the revolutionary cause.
The caption under the image reads:
"The scene represents the second attack and is taken from the right wing of the Fifty-second Regiment, with a company of grenadiers in the foreground. The left wing of the / regiment, under command of the major, has halted, and is firing a volley; the right wing is just marching past to take its position for firing. The ship-of-war firing from the / middle distance is the Lively; in the remoter distance is the smoke from the battery on Copp's Hill. The black smoke to the right is from the burning houses of Charlestown."
he first issue of Scribner's Magazine from January 1887, volume 1, issue 1.
Scribner’s Magazine, the publisher of this print, was founded by Scribner’s publishing firm in New York City. It ran from 1887 until 1939, and though some historians have noted an American emphasis in its subject matter, Scribner’s Magazine was well regarded as a distinctively cosmopolitan monthly known for its diverse content including art criticism, illustrations, cultural and social studies, and literary works with contributions from famous writers such as Henry Van Dyke, John Galsworthy, and Edith Wharton.
The Battle of Bunker Hill print accompanied "The Story of the Revolution" by Henry Cabot Lodge, an American senator and historian, that was published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1898. "The Story of the Revolution" was a two-volume work chronicling the history of the American Revolution during the years of 1775-1783 through military stories and pictures.
The artist, Howard Pyle (1853-1911), was a renowned illustrator, writer, and teacher. Pyle produced 3,300 illustrations throughout his career, with half appearing in books and magazine articles including publications such as Harper’s Monthly, Collier’s Weekly, St. Nicholas, and Scribner’s Magazine. He is known for founding the Brandywine School and training famous illustrators such as Frank Schoonover, Jessie Wilcox Smith, and N.C. Wyeth.
Original painting by Howard Pyle, 1897, oil on canvas, previously owned by the Delaware Art Museum but has since been presumed to be stolen.
Pyle’s work, and that of his contemporaries, contributed to what is known as “The Golden Age of Illustration,” a period during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of unprecedented excellence in book and magazine illustration. This boom came as a result of technological advances in printing and distribution techniques. Pyle’s print of The Battle of Bunker Hill published in Scribner’s Magazine is characteristic of the proliferation of illustrated artwork being produced in books and magazines during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which provided the public with both entertainment and information.
Bibliography
"Howard Pyle." Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2020. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/howard-pyle-6495
"About Howard Pyle." Delaware Art Museum, 2020. https://www.delart.org/collections/howard-pyle/about-howard-pyle/
Howard Pyle, The Battle of Bunker Hill, ca. 1897. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bunker_Hill_by_Pyle.jpg
"Scribner’s Magazine." Encyclopedia.com, May 26, 2020. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/culture-magazines/scribners-magazine
"Scribner’s Magazine." The Modernist Journals Project (searchable database). Brown and Tulsa Universities, ongoing. https://modjourn.org/journal/scribners-magazine/
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Henry Cabot Lodge." Encyclopaedia Britannica, May 8, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Cabot-Lodge-United-States-senator-1850-1924
John Bigelow, Jr. "The Story of the Revolution. By Henry Cabot Lodge. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1898. Two vols., pp. xv, 324; xii, 285.)" The American Historical Review vol. 5, no. 2 (December 1899): 362–367. https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/5/2/362/127049?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Lodge, Henry Cabot. The Story of the Revolution. New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1903. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/03022840/
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Battle of Bunker Hill." Encyclopaedia Britannica, June 10, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Bunker-Hill
Gannon, Susan. "Review of The Brandywine Tradition, and: Howard Pyle: Writer, Illustrator, Founder of the Brandywine School, and: Howard Pyle." Children's Literature Association Quarterly vol. 4, no. 3 (1979): 13-14. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/250080
Levin, Jo Ann Early. "The Golden Age of Illustration: Popular Art in American Magazines, 1850-1925" (1980). Dissertations available from ProQuest. AAI8018571. https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI8018571/
"What was the Golden Age of Illustration?" The R. Atkinson Fox Society, 2012. http://www.rafoxsociety.com/what-was-the-golden-age-of-illustration/
