In May of this year my wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Wilmington Delaware. Wilmington is where my grandfather studied at the Howard Pyle School of Art in the early 1900’s and is the town where he rented his first art studio.

This was my first visit to the area and I can highly recommend a trip there for anyone that enjoys American history. May is a beautiful month in Delaware and the trees and flowers were just gorgeous!

There are three museums that have Ashley paintings in their collections, the Delaware Art Museum, the Brandywine River Museum, and the Hagley Museum. All three of them were so supportive of my effort the document my grandfather’s work – I can’t thank them enough! I highly recommend visiting all three – they are all very different and have wonderful collections and beautiful grounds to wander around.

The most unexpected find of the trip was in the Ashley files at the Delaware Art Museum. In these files I found a hand written (by my grandfather) list of his illustrations. As you may recall, I have such a list for his paintings, but, until now, no information whatsoever regarding is illustration works. With this new information, a whole new door has opened for me to journey through and start the effort to document his illustrative artwork which for the most part preceded his painting artwork.

Thanks, as always, for checking in. If you have or know of someone who has an Ashley, I’d love to hear from you.