Jenny Eakin Delony Rice (American, 1862-1949), The Arkansas Traveler

Oil on canvas, signed at lower right, presented in a giltwood frame.

Stretcher size 18 1/8 x 24 1/4 in.; Frame dimensions 25 3/8 x 31 1/2 in.

This painting is after the original by Edward Payson Washburn (American, 1831-1860), completed in 1858. The composition is one of the most iconic American genre scenes of the mid-19th century, depicting a humorous frontier encounter between a well-dressed traveler on horseback and a rustic squatter playing a fiddle outside a rough log cabin. The image illustrates the popular tale and tune "The Arkansas Traveler," a story and melody popularized by Colonel Sandford C. Faulkner in the 1840s, in which a traveler wins over a reticent fiddler by completing the tune he has been struggling to play.

The original painting is recorded in the Catalog of American Portraits, with ownership attributed to the Arkansas History Commission, and is documented in the National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution) archives. Shortly after its completion, the image was widely disseminated through lithographic reproductions, including an 1859 Boston publication by J. H. Bufford with lithography by Leopold Grozelier, and later through popular Currier & Ives prints in the 1870s. The widespread circulation of the composition led other artists to create their own versions of the scene, as exemplified by the present work.

Repaired tear to upper center with associated retouch, light age cracking, very slight stretcher lines.