New Collection: Frank Schoonover Photographs

The Hagley Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Frank Schoonover Negatives Collection from the Delaware Art Museum. The Schoonover collection documents the life and work of the famed commercial artist who was active during the “golden age” of magazine illustration in the first quarter of the twentieth century.  

The specific storage requirements for negatives of this age made it difficult for the Delaware Art Museum to retain the collection. The collection is a perfect fit for Hagley in documenting the life and process of a commercial illustrator. As part of Hagley’s agreement with the Delaware Art Museum and the Schoonover family, the collection will be digitized and put online. The work is currently in progress and can be seen at the following: digital.hagley.org/schoonover.  A collection of photographic prints from the Schoonover collection is available and open for research onsite at the Delaware Art Museum.  

Born in New Jersey in 1877, Schoonover learned his craft under Howard Pyle whose “Brandywine School” was a proving ground for many artists starting in the 1890s. Along with Schoonover, N.C. Wyeth, Stanley Arthurs, and Violet Oakley were among those trained by Pyle.

Frank Schoonover’s work appeared in many prominent publications including Ladies Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Harper's and many others. His studio, built on North Rodney Street in Wilmington, Delaware in 1906, served the artistic community as a place to work and teach throughout his career.  He taught classes there for children and adults starting in the 1940s up until his death in 1972. The studio remains an active space for artists today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

During his time as a commercial illustrator, Schoonover used photography as source material for his artwork. Having adopted Pyle's philosophy that direct observation is critical for an illustrator, Schoonover traveled extensively over the course of his career, and photographs he took on these trips feature prominently in the collection at Hagley.

Among these are striking images he took as research for muckraking articles highlighting Italian immigrants traveling in steerage and poor labor conditions of children in Pennsylvania coal mines. Other locations represented in the photographs range from Canada to the Caribbean, from Pennsylvania anthracite country to the American West.

In addition to using travel as inspiration, Schoonover photographed costumed models in his studio that we can connect to his published illustrations (see example below).  The collection also includes many personal photographs of friends and family, particularly of his two children, Cortlandt and Elizabeth, whom he often used as models. Schoonover's affinity for nature is evident in the collection as well in the copious landscape scenes, many of which were taken in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, where Schoonover had spent summers as a child and where he later purchased the property.

View additional photographs at digital.hagley.org/schoonover 

Hagley is grateful to the Delaware Art Museum and John Schoonover for giving Hagley the opportunity to preserve and share a collection of photographs that document the working life of an important commercial illustrator with intimate ties to the Brandywine Valley. 

For a detailed description of the Frank Schoonover negatives collection, see the finding aid.