Clever Peter and the Ogress / And none too soon

Date1890

Artist Katharine Pyle (American painter, illustrator, and author, 1863–1938)

Illustration Citation"Clever Peter and the Ogress," by Katharine Pyle, in St. Nicholas, February 1890

MediumInk on illustration board

Dimensionscomposition: 9 × 6 7/16 in. (22.9 × 16.4 cm)
sheet: 15 1/4 × 12 1/2 in. (38.7 × 31.8 cm)

Credit LineGift of Willard S. Morse

Object number1900-111

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsDRAWING

Label TextKatharine Pyle wrote and illustrated this morality tale about the fate of truant boys who are captured by an ogress until Peter devises a clever way of escape. Although they resolve not to avoid school again, they are pleased to steal the ogress' "pies and ginger cakes."

The youngest child of the Pyle family, Katharine was prolific as both author and illustrator. At the turn of the twentieth century, many considered art an appropriate extension of women's "natural" talent for beautifying their surroundings, but there was still resistance to women as professional. The artist and illustrator Joseph Pennell offered Katharine Pyle as an example of why there was "no earthly reason why women should not be illustrators."