Frank Schoonover

Frank Schoonover
Birth name	Frank Earle Schoonover
Born	August 19, 1877 Oxford, New Jersey, United States
Died	Aug 1972 Wilmington, Delaware, United States
Nationality	American
Field	Illustrator
Influenced by	Howard Pyle

Frank Earle Schoonover (August 19, 1877 - Aug 1972) was an American illustrator. Born in Oxford, New Jersey, he studied under Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and became part of what would be known as the Brandywine School. A prolific contributor to books and magazines during the early twentieth century, the so-called "Golden Age of Illustration", he illustrated stories as diverse as Clarence Mulford's Hopalong Cassidy stories and Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars. In 1918 and 1919, he produced a series of paintings along with Gayle Porter Hoskins illustrating the American forces in the First World War for a series of souvenir prints published in the Ladies Home Journal.

Hopalong Takes Command, 1905. Oil on canvas. Delaware Art Museum

Schoonover helped to organize what is now the Delaware Art Museum and was chairman of the fundraising committee charged with acquiring works by Howard Pyle. In his later years he restored paintings including some by Howard Pyle and turned to easel paintings of the Brandywine and Delaware landscapes. He also gave art lessons, established a small art school in his studio, 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.” Schoonover died at 94, leaving behind more than two thousand illustrations.

External links

• Bud Plant's Biography
• Frank Schoonover fund
• Schoonover Studios
• The National Museum of American Illustration
• Delaware Art Museum

Further reading

• Laurence S Cutler; Judy Goffman Cutler; National Museum of American Illustration. Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists. Edison, NJ: Wellfleet Press, 2004. ISBN 0785818170; ISBN 9780785818175
• Harrington, Peter, "Images of the Great War," American History, Vol. XXXI, No. 5, Nov-Dec. 1996, pp. 30-36, 64