In Donald Pittenger on Illustration, he cites some “official” support for his belief that illustration and fine art aren’t all that different:
Although I have held these views for many years, I was pleased to have them corroborated by Burton Silverman in biographical notes to the exhibition catalog Sight and Insight: the Art of Burton Silverman (New York: Madison Square Press, 1998). On page 38 he recalls from childhood that “It also seems quite interesting to me now that, as a nine-year-old, I could not very well distinguish qualitative differences between Edward Burne-Jones’s and N.C. Wyeth’s pictures. Howard Pyle’s richly graphic drawings of King Arthur’s Knights seemed not far from an Albrecht Durer or Peter Breughel drawing. All of them presented an astounding ability to re-create the world with astonishing veracity, and so I did not discriminate between fine art and illustration”.