On this day, November 9, 1911, illustrator and author Howard Pyle died in Florence, Italy while studying to better his mural art. Pyle studied art in Philadelphia with the Belgian artist Van der Weilen and later learned about illustration on the job in New York. In the midst of his own successful career, Pyle began teaching illustration to art students at the Drexel Institute. In 1900 Pyle opened his own school, The Howard Pyle School of Art in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware.