1877 - 1972

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

With inspiration from Pyle, in 1903, Schoonover began repeated travel to the Hudson Bay area to experience that environment for use in his illustration works. Schoonover’s journeys to the Canada and Alaska were more remarkable, when one realizes that in 1903 the artist traveled some 1,200 miles, entirely by snowshoe, canoe and dog sled.  Over the years, a great number of his illustrations were based on those daunting excursions, which allowed him to accurately portray the living conditions of the recently settled American frontiers. He traveled out West and lived with the Blackfeet Indians, and his depictions of Eskimo’s are as accurate as one can get. To Build A Fire (from Jack London’s story of the same title) is a perfect example of such a painting. Like London, Schoonover had learned in the wild and what it takes to survive. Like Pyle and Wyeth, Schoonover’s understanding of the rugged life made him a prime candidate for illustrating many classic tales of adventure. Among them: Kidnapped, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and Ivanhoe. He also illustrated many of “the world’s most successful author,” Zane Grey’s serials and novels including Open Range, Avalanche, Rustlers of Silver Ridge, Rogue River Feud, and Valley of Wild Horses. 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 and 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. In 1900, he did a cover for the Saturday Evening Post, then many cover and interior illustration commissions came his way for American Girl, Century, Collier’s Weekly, Girl Scouts Magazine, Harper’s, McCall’s Magazine, McClure’s Magazine, Everybody’s Magazine, Frank Leslie’s Monthly, Outing Magazine,  Progressive Farmer,  Redbook, Sunday Magazine, and Scribner’s Magazine.

In 1905, the author Clarence Edward Mulford developed a character with one short leg and thusly was called Hopalong Cassidy or ‘Hoppy’ to his ardent fans. The illustrator for this character was the author’s friend, Frank Schoonover. He found a model for the character during his travels and painted a real life cowboy with a short leg and immortalized him in the process.

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

Frank was born in Oxford, New Jersey, his father worked in an iron foundry, and the family was not long on culture. He applied to Howard Pyle’s first classes at Drexel and was joyous upon being admitted, stating “I felt honored because his class was a pretty strong one-made up of big shots…Jessie Willcox Smith, Maxfield Parrish, Thornton and Violet Oakley, and others.” It is worth noting that Parrish only stayed in Pyle’s class for a couple of weeks.

“Schoonover Red” became a signature element in most of Frank’s paintings. He was enamored of the color 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 and to make it a characteristic symbol of his paintings.

Frank helped to organize what is not 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 stain 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.” Frank Schoonover died at 94, leaving behind more than 2,500 illustrations.