Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
The Fight with Old Slewfoot
Alternate Title(s):Fight with Old Slewfoot
Medium: Oil on hardboard (Renaissance Panel)
Date: 1939
Dimensions:
30 1/8 × 22 1/4 in. (76.5 × 56.5 cm)
Brandywine River Museum of Art, Gift of Henry H. Silliman, Jr., in memory of Mariana duPont Silliman, 2012
Accession number: 2012.9
Copyright: © artist, artist's estate, or other rights holders
Label Copy:
Wyeth worked directly with author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings as he painted the illustrations for The Yearling. He made a trip to her home in Cross Creek, Florida, in the spring of 1939 to meet Rawlings and experience the landscape that was the setting for her book. The Wyeth Family Archives includes several photographs of caged bears he saw the area.
The illustrations for The Yearling are done in a medium Wyeth first used for Men of Concord (1936)—thinly applied oil paint on gessoed panels. Wyeth’s images for The Yearling provided inspiration for distinct scenes in the movie version of the story, filmed in 1946.
Wyeth worked directly with author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings as he painted the illustrations for The Yearling. He made a trip to her home in Cross Creek, Florida, in the spring of 1939 to meet Rawlings and experience the landscape that was the setting for her book. The Wyeth Family Archives includes several photographs of caged bears he saw the area.
The illustrations for The Yearling are done in a medium Wyeth first used for Men of Concord (1936)—thinly applied oil paint on gessoed panels. Wyeth’s images for The Yearling provided inspiration for distinct scenes in the movie version of the story, filmed in 1946.
Research Number: NCW: 920
InscribedLower right: N C WYETH (underlined); adhered to reverse of panel, partial Renaissance Panel label of F. Weber Co., no. 754, dated 3/24/39
ProvenanceThe artist; Mariana duPont Silliman; gift to Henry H. Silliman, to 2012;
Exhibition HistoryFitchburg, MA, 1940; probably Clearwater, FL, 1941; Wilmington, DE, 1968, no. 14, as "Fight with Old Slewfoot"
References
"American Front," Fitchburg (MA) Sentinel, Feb. 6, 1940, p. 6; "N. C. Wyeth," Life Magazine, vol. 20, no. 24 (June 17, 1946), illustration p. 81; Reader's Digest Condensed Books (Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest Association, 1966), illustration p. 225; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 216, illustration in b/w p. 119; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), I.1272, p. 573-574
Curatorial RemarksHenry White Taylor was the first director of the Clearwater (Florida) Art Museum but prior to this post was in the Bucks County-Philadlephia region, a former student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He had met N. C. Wyeth by 1928 and was probably the organizer of the exhibition in Clearwater of Wyeth's Yearling paintings.
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transpency directly from painting
Photo Credit:Rick Echelmeyer, 1/2006