In the weeks before Advent, I want to focus on three noted American book illustrators, whose works have recently added to the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. German-born Artist Arthur Ernst Becher is the oldest of the trio with a career spanning two centuries. A student of innovative American Illustrator Howard Pyle, Becher excelled in providing images for popular pulp fiction and morally-improving literature during the formative years of the American publishing industry. Becher illustrations for a book on the life of King David and a collection of the Parables of Jesus, redone for America's "Gilded Age" readers, can be viewed in the gallery of his new uploaded profile page in the Sacred Artists section. You can also see four beautifully-rendered, mixed media working sketches by Becher from my collection. Scenes of the Nativity and Jesus the Healer were, probably, intended as Bible Story Book illustrations. There are devotional images of Jesus the True Vine (where Becher's wife, Frieda, served as the model for the woman in the grape arbor) and of Easter morning with budding flowers in a garden, heralding the Resurrection. (John Kohan)