Painter, illustrator Gayle Porter Hoskins was born July 20, 1887 in Brazil, Indiana, but he would become associated with Delaware. His subjects included dramatic episodes from American history, the life of the cowboy, as well as formal portraits.

When he was five years old, his family moved to Denver, Colorado, where he grew up around horses he would later paint. An artistically precocious youngster, Hoskins worked for the "Denver Post" newspaper as a cartoonist when only fourteen. Three years later, in 1904, his mother died. When the family moved to Chicago, Hoskins studied with Thomas Wood Stevens, Charles Francis Browne, John Vanderpoel and Frank Phoenix at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. In 1907, he became a mural designer for the Marshall Field and Company Department Store, and "Red Book Magazine" published his first illustrations.

He moved to Wilmington, Delaware in 1907, at the invitation of well-known painter-illustrator Howard Pyle to study with him there until Pyle left for Italy in 1910. Hoskin's illustrations for calendars, magazine covers and book jackets soon appeared in major American magazines. By 1918, Hoskins was a prominent illustrator.

Also a teacher, Hoskins was a founding member, in 1928, of the Wilmington Academy of Art where he taught life drawing, illustration, studies from the antique, costume sketching, and composition. He was also a co-founder, with Frank Schoonover, of the Wilmington Sketch Club; as well as a founding member of the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, where he frequently exhibited.

Hoskins began painting portraits and historical subjects in the late 1930s and kept this focus until his death in 1962. His works included "Dover, February 5, 1833-The Date of the Granting of the Charter to Newark College" and "The Burning of King George III's Portrait on Dover Green, 1776", both in the collection of the University of Delaware, Newark.

Hoskins died January 14, 1962, at the age of seventy-four. The Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington, features the Gayle Hoskins Collection of paintings, photographs, clippings, family memorabilia and magazines that Hoskin's illustrated including "Good Housekeeping", "Harper's Weekly", "Harper's Monthly", "Liberty", "Cosmopolitan" and many others.

A bibliography includes Rowland Elzea and Elizabeth H. Hawkes' A Small School of Art: The Students of Howard Pyle, published in 1980 in Wilmington by the Delaware Art Museum; Illustrations by Gayle Porter Hoskins, Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1973; Allen Russell Neville's Gayle Porter Hoskins: Artist-Illustrator, 1887-1962; Brandywine Tradition: Sunday Star, Wilmington, Delaware, December 19, 1907.

Source:
http://www.delart.org/HFS_library/Finding%20aids/Hoskins.htm