Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
"Rounding up."
Alternate Title(s):Little Rattlesnake Creek; Rounding Up (Little Rattlesnake Creek); "Vamoose!"
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1905
Dimensions:
38 × 26 in. (96.5 × 66 cm)
Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming
Gift of John M. Schiff, 1.77
Accession number: SUPP2000.381
Research Number: NCW: 381
InscribedLower right: N. C. WYETH / LITTLE RATTLE-SNAKE CREEK / -1904- ; label adhered to verso: COE KERR GALLERY / 49 EST 82nd STREET / NEW YORK, N. Y. 10028
ProvenanceThe artist; [?]; John M. Schiff, New York, NY to 1977
Exhibition HistoryCody, WY, Whitney Gallery, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Special Exhibition Opening Season, June 1 - Oct. 1, 1969, "no. 89-94 Series of six paintings of Scenes from a Cow Camp," n.p.; Cody, WY, 1980, p. 56, and plate 16, as "Little Rattlesnake Creek"; Chadds Ford, PA, 1990(2), b/w illustration p. 6 as "Rounding Up (Little Rattlesnake Creek)", catalogue no. 11 on p. 78, also p. 75; Atlanta, GA, High Museum of Art, "Art of the American Frontier from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West," Nov. 3, 2013-April 13, 2014, Plate no. 153, p. 94; Chadds Ford, PA, Brandywine River Museum of Art, June 22-Sept. 15, 2019 (and Portland, ME, Portland Museum of Art, Oct. 4, 2019-Jan. 12, 2020, and Cincinnati, OH, Taft Museum, Feb. 8-May 3, 2020), "N. C. Wyeth: New Perspectives," illus. p. 115;
References
"Wilmington Artists in the March Magazines," undated (but March 1906 by context) and unattributed article from Wilmington, DE, newspaper; Philip Ashton Rollins, Jinglebob (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), cover label illustration, titled "Vamoose!"; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 274, b/w illustration p. 40; Robert W. Engel, "N. C. Wyeth's Day with the Round-Up," Buffalo Bill Historical Center Newsletter, vol. 14, no. 3 (Fall 1990), b/w illustration ps. 1-2; Sarah E. Boehme, "N. C. Wyeth, From the Hashknife to the Palette Knife," Points West (Cody, WY: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Fall 2002), ps. 4 and 7, color illus. p. 13; Liza Kurwin with Joan Lord, Artists in Their Studios/Images from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, New York: HarperCollins, 2007, illus. on easel, p. 43; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), I.112, p. 135
Curatorial RemarksIn October 1904, in a Denver studio, Wyeth painted a picture he called "On the Circle (Driving Cattle Through the Gulch)," one of four pictures of horizontal composition (Betsy James Wyeth, ed., The Wyeths, The Letters of N. C. Wyeth, 1901-1945 (Boston: Gambit, 1971), p. 112). Since Scribner's preferred vertically-oriented images, Wyeth repainted the picture in early 1905 in his Wilmington studio under Howard Pyle's guidance. The Denver picture has not been located but "Rounding up" is the vertically-oriented version of the subject.
According to letters, Wyeth had trouble with the painting and reworked it twice, "It is the third one of that same subject "Driving cattle through the gulch" and a huge canvas at that and by far the best picture I ever did both in composition, color and spirit. Mr. Pyle was rather prejudiced...because I started it over and over....but I knew what I wanted and finally I got it...he likes the picture much" (NCW to Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth, March 24, 1905, Wyeth Family Archives).
"Wilmington Artists in the March Magazines," an undated (but March 1906 by context) and unattributed article from a Wilmington, DE, newspaper, states that "The full-page illustrations in color [from "A Day with the Round-Up"] are in his best style and their originals have been sold to a New York collector."
According to letters, Wyeth had trouble with the painting and reworked it twice, "It is the third one of that same subject "Driving cattle through the gulch" and a huge canvas at that and by far the best picture I ever did both in composition, color and spirit. Mr. Pyle was rather prejudiced...because I started it over and over....but I knew what I wanted and finally I got it...he likes the picture much" (NCW to Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth, March 24, 1905, Wyeth Family Archives).
"Wilmington Artists in the March Magazines," an undated (but March 1906 by context) and unattributed article from a Wilmington, DE, newspaper, states that "The full-page illustrations in color [from "A Day with the Round-Up"] are in his best style and their originals have been sold to a New York collector."
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:1.) Transparency directly from painting; 2.) Unknown photographer, 1905.
Photo Credit:1.) Brandywine River Museum photography files; 2.) Image is courtesy of the Allen Tupper True and True family papers, 1841-1987 in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.