Frank Earle Schoonover (1877-1972) was enamoured with Howard Pyle’s magazine work from the time he was a young boy in Trenton, New Jersey. After youthful endeavours copying Pyle’s illustrations, Schoonover joined his class at Drexel Institute in 1896. The young artist’s promising talent was duly noted by his teacher and he was offered scholarships to Pyle’s summer school in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Schoonover was well known for his illustrations of outdoor adventure stories, especially of the Canadian and American West. He maintained a studio in Wilmington throughout his career and, with Stanley Arthurs, was a founder in 1912 of the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, the predecessor of the Delaware Art Museum. The Frank E. Schoonover Manuscript Collection contains photographs, correspondence, clippings, organisational records, diaries, and day books that document the work he executed. Delaware Art Museum
For a more in-depth biography see part 1, and for earlier works by Schoonover, see parts 1 & 2 also.
This is part 3 of 7-part series on the works of Frank Schoonover.
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| 1907 "The two of them looked at each other with much interest" halftone photomechanical print 23 x 15 cm The New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1908 "As he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog" wood engraving The Century illustrated monthly magazine |
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| 1908 "Keep a Good Two Yards Ahead & Don't Turn Your Beezer" oil 61 x 94 cm |
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| 1911 "Vidette in Pirogue" Harper's Monthly Magazine oil on canvas 55.8 x 83.8 cm In January of 1911, Schoonover and his new bride travelled to Cuba and the bayou country of Louisiana for their honeymoon. In both locations, the artist visited the haunts of the pirates, sketched the environs, took photographs, and made notes with the plan of writing and illustrating an article on the infamous pirate, Jean Lafitte. Schoonover’s wife did research in the library while her husband continued to scour the bayous. In a letter to Alex H. Lappe, Esq. in 1912, Schoonover wrote: “I made a trip through the various bayous to the islands and and there discovered some of the descendents of the Pierre Lafitte band…I paddled about in just such a green pirogue as you see in the picture…took up my position back of a fringe of salt marsh grass and watched the Gulf. |
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| 1911 "Youth will be served" oil on canvas 50.8 x 76.2 cm |
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| 1911 "Youth will be served" detail |
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| 1911 "Youth will be served" detail |
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| 1911 Moses, with his feet against the stove, studied the paper oil on canvas 76.2 x 50.8 cm |
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| 1911 In the Haunts of Jean LaFitte Harper’s Magazine, December, 1911 oil 83.8 x 55.8 cm |
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| 1912 "What Happened Here?" oil on canvas 76.2 x 86.3 cm The Ladies Home Journal, March 1913 Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA |
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| 1912 The hoop, bright yellow, danced up into the air McClure's Magazine |
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| 1913 Sportsman landing Trout cover of Popular Magazine cover |
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| 1913 Sportsman landing Trout original artwork oil 86.3 x 60.9 cm |
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| 1913 The little wet foot oil on canvas 86.3 x 60.9 cm Harper's Magazine April-May 1913 |
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| 1913 The Orb of the Day American Magazine, December, 1913 oil on board 20.3 x 22.8 cm |
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| 1914 “I Told You Not to Come Here” oil on canvas (size not given) Everybody’s Magazine, November 1914 |
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| 1914 "Runaway Horses" American Magazine oil on canvas 86.3 x 121.9 cm |
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| 1914 "Take her!" oil on canvas 63.5 x 86.3 cm |
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| 1914 Bushkill House oil on board 14.6 x 20.3 cm |
In 1914, Schoonover and his wife bought this house as a summer residence in Bushkill, Pike County, Pennsylvania. The Schoonover ancestors had lived for over two hundred years in Pike County and as a child, the artist spent his summers in and around Bushkill with his grandparents. Every summer after purchasing his own house, Schoonover and his family and often, friends as well, stayed at the ‘Bushkill house’. The artist worked throughout the summers on his illustration commissions in a studio in the loft of a nearby mill and then in the barn behind the house. After the early 1940’s, he continued to use the barn as his studio, concentrating on commissions, stained glass window designs, and landscapes. The family owned that summer residence until they were forced to sell it to the government in 1962 when the Tock’s Island Dam project for a local reservoir was underway. The dam was never built and the house was finally razed.
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| 1914 Snow Blind (also known as “On came the strange pair, stricken voyageur and faithful dog.”) Scribner’s Magazine, May 1914 oil on canvas 101.6 x 81.2 cm |
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| 1914 The Trawler oil on canvas (size not given) Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA |
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| 1919 "Sgt. Alvin C. York 327th Inf. 82nd Div. Attack" oil on canvas 50.8 x 127 cm |
Here Schoonover portrays one of the most heroic individual actions of World War I. On October 8, 1918, Sgt. Alvin Cullum York, a member of the 328th Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Division, went out with a patrol near Hill 223 on the Meuse-Argonne battlefield. They met strong resistance from German forces. York assumed command of the patrol, and they silenced two of the dominating machine gun positions that had pinned down American forces in the valley. He and the patrol evacuated all of the wounded, German and American, and returned leading a column of 132 German prisoners. His heroism is legend in the annals of military history. He received the Medal of Honor. Marshall Ferdinand Foch, Commander-in-Chief, Allied Armies said about Sgt. York’s feat, “The Greatest Thing Accomplished by any Private Soldier of All the Armies of Europe.
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| Battle of Cantigny - Where the Americans won their first Laurels |
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| Doughboys First - Crossing the Moselle into Germany |
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| Kamerad - Capture of a cellar by American Marines |
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| Kamerad detail |
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| Kamerad detail |
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| Leading Them Back Home For Christmas - Coming home for Christmas, French Refugees |
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| Leading Them Back Home For Christmas detail |
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| Leading Them Back Home For Christmas detail |
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| Our famous "Lost Battalion" in Argonne Forest |
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| Smash the Hindenburg Line |
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| Smash the Hindenburg Line detail |
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| Smash the Hindenburg Line detail |
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| The "Victorious Retreat" back to the Rhine published by Ladies Home Journal artwork: oil on canvas 76.2 x 127 cm |
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| How twenty Marines Marines took Bouresches oil on canvas 60.9 x 10.6 cm |
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| The Old and the Young of St. Mihiel greet their Liberators oil on canvas 76.2 x 127 cm |
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| Under the White Flag oil on canvas 76.2 x 127 cm |
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| When Peace Came oil on canvas 76.2 x 127 cm |
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| When Peace Came detail |
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| When Peace Came detail |
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| 1915 "Do you think you could find news?" oil on canvas 66 x 35.5 cm |
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| 1915 “I am Francois Hertel” Scribner’s Magazine "A little tragedy at Coocoocache" oil on canvas 81.2 x 55.8 cm |
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| 1915 "There Was a Flash of Long White Fangs" from “Red Flag of Papoose Peak” Collier’s Weekly, 8 January 1916 oil on canvas 76.2 x 101.6 cm |
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| 1915 "The bullet went smashing through the violin case and into the fiddler’s shoulder" from “The Fiddler of Glory Hole.” Collier’s Weekly, 4 December 1915 oil on canvas 60.9 x 93.9 cm |
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