EXTRACTS: Pirates! Illustrators Special Edition © 2020 The Book Palace (128 PAGES in Full edition)

108 Pyle and McClure’s . By 1911, McClure’s was sold to its cred‐ itors but, by then, Pyle was long gone. As Pyle had done some murals in America, and with his expertise in illustrating historical scenes, he thought it was time to study the true masters: the Italian Renaissance muralists. Despite having already experienced bouts of ill health, in 1910 Pyle travelled with his family to Italy. A year after his arrival, in November 9th, 1911, he died from a kidney infection. Wyeth had mixed feelings about working with Pyle again (see illustrators 23 ). As excited as Pyle might have been at rekindling the re‐ lationship with his pupils, it all began to sour a couple of months later when the whole writing staff defected over disputes with the directors of McClure’s and formed The American Magazine . McClure’s also began to lose readers and went into debt some years later. To make matters worse, one of the artists Pyle had hired, his ex-pupil Frank Schoonover, never got paid for work done, and sued both