Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle (1853–1911) was born in Wilmington, Delaware, and studied art in Philadelphia before Scribner's Magazine accepted his first published piece in 1876. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883), his own retelling of the ballad tradition illustrated with his own pen-and-ink drawings, became the version of the outlaw most American readers grew up on, and he went on to write and illustrate further books on medieval romance and piracy. From 1894 he taught illustration at Drexel Institute, and after 1900 ran his own school in Wilmington and nearby Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; its roughly two hundred students, many of whom became major illustrators in their own right, became known as the Brandywine School. He died in Florence, Italy, in 1911, while studying mural painting.