Frank Schoonover - part 1

Frank Schoonover in Howard Pyle's studio

As a student at Howard Pyle’s school in the Brandywine area, Frank Earle Schoonover became a devoted adherent to his teacher’s tough belief that an artist should “live what he paints”. In 1896, he entered Pyle’s classes at Drexel, choosing to study illustration rather than the ministry, which his parents had most coveted for him. After his second year of study, Pyle accepted him into his Chadds Ford Summer School on scholarship and by 1899 he was illustrating books such as A Jersey Boy of the Revolution and In the Hands of the Red Coats. By 1903, he was illustrating outdoor adventure stories; In the Open by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews was the first of a long list of such commissions.

In 1903, with more inspiration from Pyle, Schoonover travelled to the Hudson Bay area to experience that environment for use in his illustration works. Schoonover’s journeys to Canada and Alaska are more remarkable when one realises that on one trip in 1903 the artist travelled some 1,200 miles entirely by snowshoe, canoe and dog sled. Over the years, a great number of his illustrations were based on those daring excursions, enabling him to accurately portray the living conditions of recently settled American frontiers.

He illustrated more than 200 classic books, and with classmate Gayle Hoskins he organized the Wilmington Sketch Club in 1925 and formed his own art school in 1942, teaching until he was 91 years of age in 1968.

His earliest commissions came through Howard Pyle and at least once he shared a commission with fellow student, Philip R. Goodwin.

Over many years of studying together, Schoonover and Pyle became close friends and ultimately, their studios in Wilmington were near each other, Schoonover also helped Pyle with major commissions and teaching. He befriended another fellow student, Stanley Arthurs, and in 1906 they both traveled to Jamaica with Pyle. That same year he rented a studio in Wilmington with his neighbours being more of Pyle’s students: N.C. Wyeth, Henry Jarvis Peck, and Harvey Dunn

“Schoonover Red” became a signature element in most of Frank’s paintings. He was enamoured with the colour red and in each of his illustrations he tried, wherever possible, to put in a dash of cadmium red, varnished more heavily than elsewhere to heighten its intensity. It became a characteristic symbol of his paintings.

Frank helped to organise what is now the Delaware Museum of Art and was chairman of the fundraising committee charged with acquiring works by Howard Pyle. In his later years he restored paintings including some by Pyle and turned to easel paintings of Brandywine and Delaware landscapes. He also gave art lessons, established a small art school, designed stained glass windows, and dabbled in science fiction art (illustrating Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars). He was known locally as the “Dean of Delaware Artists”.

This is part 1 of 7-part series on the works of Frank Schoonover:

1885 "Outing"

1899 "Drummer Boy"
oil on canvas 91.4 x 30 cm
Brandywine Museum, Chadds Ford, PA
Margaret I. Handy Memorial Fund

1899 A Jersey Boy in Revolution by Everett T. Tomlinson 

published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company:

1899 "He was still alive"
oil on illustration board en grisaille 30.4 x 17.7 cm

1899 "Nearer and nearer they approached"
oil on academy board en grisaille33 x 19.6 cm

1899 "Sinking of the Yawl Boat"
oil on illustration board en grisaille 33 x 20.3 cm
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1900 The Chase
oil en grisaille on board 34.3 x 22 cm

1902 The Lane That Had No Turning

published by Doubleday Page & Co.

Bustard House
charcoal and wash on paper 7.6 x 15.2 cm

Chapter heading "Woman Sewing"
graphite on paper 15.2 x 15.2 cm

Chapter heading "The Lane that had No Turning"
charcoal and wash on paper 12.7 x 15.2 cm

Drink to Madelinette
oil on canvas en grisaille(size not given)

Bustard Coach
graphite and gouache on paper 13.3 x 17.7 cm

Chapter heading "Fournel and Seigneur"
graphite on paper 30.4 x 22.8 cm

Chapter heading "In Fournels house"
graphite on paper 30.4 x 22.8 cm

Chapter heading "The One Who Saw"
graphite on paper 22.8 x 30.4 cm

Chapter heading “Good evening Monsieur”
graphite on paper 30.4 x 22.8 cm

Chapter heading "Iya longtemps que je t’aime
Jamais je ne t’oublierai"
graphite on paper (size not given)

Lajeunesse
 graphite on paper 12 x 12 cm

Looked at the dead thing
oil on boarden grisaille 45.7 x 30.4 cm

On Guard!
oil on canvas en grisaille  (size not given)

Seigneur
graphite on paper 10.8 x  13.3 cm

She threw herself on her Bed
graphite and wash on paper 19 x 23.5 cm

Tailpiece: Finding the Will
graphite on paper (size not given)

Tailpiece: Tardif
graphite on paper  (size not given)

The duel between Havel and Tardif
oil on board en grisaille (size not given)

The Manor House of Seigneur of Pontiac
graphite on paper 9.5 x 17.1 cm

The National Fete was over
oil on academy board, en grisaille 45.7 x 30.4 cm

What will she do with it? 
oil on Academy board en grissaile 45.7 x 21.6 cm

1903 Children of the Coal Shadow

published in McClure's Magazine, February 1903 issue:

1903 Breaker Boys Meeting
charcoal on paper 45 x 36.2 cm

1903 Scranton - cornet player
charcoal on paper 20.3 x 10.1 cm

1903 Door boy in gangway
charcoal on paper (size not given)

Notice prohibiting coal picking
graphite & charcoal on paper 30.4 x 16.5cm

The Forelady “Leads an isolated life of conscious rectitude for about $5.00 a week”
charcoal on board 53.3 x 17.7 cm

1903 “The Waifs of the Street.” 

McClure’s Magazine, May 1903:

“Hastily bolted meals, with often double a man’s portion of coffee, cigars, and cigarettes.”
charcoal & gouache on paper 26 x 14.2 cm

“He is sixteen, and stunted bodily, mentally, and morally to the lowest degree.”
charcoal on paper (size not given)

"Lemonade Bill’, who claims to sell two thousand waffles a day, and is an authority on the street diet
(medium not given) 32.3 x 30.4 cm

"Playing Craps"
(medium not given) 21.6 x 33 cm

“Smoking is almost universal.”
charcoal & gouache on paper (size not given)

“The work is almost wholly dependent on the crowds in the street”
graphite & gouache on paper 29.2 x 29.2 cm

“They lie in tangled heaps…over gratings, down steps, and under benches.”
graphite 21.6 x 30.4 cm

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1903 The Cholera Ship
Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, June 1903
"With this ring of death round us."
oil on canvas 60.9 x 40.6 cm

1903 The Peru Pauper Case.
 Everybody’s Monthly Magazine, September 1903
"She sank down by the fence in a heap"
 oil on canvas (size not given)

1903 The Boatman
charcoal on paper 30 x 24.1 cm

1903 The Blood Lilies. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons
“O Great Chief! be not angry–“
oil on board, en grisaille (size not given)

1903 Scribner’s Magazine, July 1903
The man came toward him and bent to look at him
oil on canvas (size not given)

1903 Louise Chamberlain. “At the High Water.”
Scribner’s Magazine, September 1903
Clutching hands rose through the stir oil on canvas 71.1 x 43.1 cm

1903 Louise Chamberlain. “At the High Water.”
Scribner’s Magazine, September 1903 
All the world was water except the strong arm around her
oil on canvas 71.1 x 43.1 cm

1903 “The Woman and the Poet.” by Alice Prescott Smith
Scribner’s Magazine, September 1905
Rhyming his gentle melancholy into verses.
(Medium not given) 71.1 x 71.1 cm