About this collection

Frank Earle Schoonover (1877-1972) was a prolific commercial illustrator, artist, and avid photographer based in Wilmington, Delaware. Over the course of a six-decade career, he completed more than twenty-five hundred works, primarily illustrations for magazines and books but also landscapes, portraits, murals, book plates, sculpture, and stained-glass windows. In addition to his own art, Schoonover began teaching in the early 1920s. He was active in the Wilmington arts community, and opened his own school of art in Wilmington in 1941.

Schoonover was also an avid photographer. In addition to utilizing travel observations, Schoonover relied on the use of human models for his illustrations throughout his career. The Frank E. Schoonover negatives (Accession 2017.239) collection consists of negatives taken by Schoonover, largely for use as source material for his artwork. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

Image: Breakers and boys sorting coal at anthracite coal mills near Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1903. Click here to view in the collection.