John Quidor

American, 1801 - 1881

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American painter (1801-1881)

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In front of a crowd of at least two dozen people, an old man with a long white beard and hair, wearing tattered clothing, points with a crooked finger toward another man in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale, peachy skin except one man with light brown skin at the front of the crowd, to our right. The men in the painting wear waistcoats or jackets, with pants that buckle at the knee over stockings. At the center of the painting, the white hair of the oldest man, Rip van Van Winkle, flies back from his balding head as he looks to our left with bulging eyes. He has a bulb-like nose and his mouth is open. He holds the long barrel of a rifle with one hand and points to our left with gnarled fingers with the other. His shirt, jacket, and pants are all parchment white, with gaping holes in the elbows and knees. One calf is covered in a tattered, sky-blue stocking and the other leg is bare. All ten toes poke out of worn, buckled shoes. Rip Van Winkle points and looks wildly at the man standing nearby, to our left. That man’s cheeks and hooked nose are flushed red. Facing our right in profile, he glowers at Rip Van Winkle under lowered brows, and his pink lips turn downward at the corner we can see. A white braid falls over the shoulder closer to us, and he plants the back of that hand on his hip. His other hand rests on a wooden cane. He wears a tricorn hat and a navy-blue jacket with large, silver buttons over a rose-red vest and white shirt. A gold object, perhaps a pocket watch fob, hangs at his hip over straw-yellow pants. A third man, to our right, looks on with one hand raised, palm facing out. He holds a long, silver pipe in his other hand. He has brown skin, a pointed nose, full, pink lips, and bulging eyes. A rolled-up paper is tucked into a pocket of his honey-brown jacket, and he wears brick-red pants with teal-blue stockings. The bottom edge of the paper reads, “seventy-six.” Another partially unfurled scroll at his feet reads, “ELECTION RIGHTS OF CITIZENS LIBERTY BUNKER’S HILL.” A man leans against a tree beyond this trio, to our left. To our right, a dense crowd of dozens of men, women, and children, painted more loosely and with more exaggerated facial features, are clustered before a tan-colored house with a stepped roof and a two-story inn. The latter has a sign hanging from the eave with a portrait of a man with white hair, wearing a military uniform. The sign is labeled beneath with “GENERAL WASHINGTON.” People look on from the upstairs windows. An American flag with thirteen stars flutters from a flagpole, which a boy climbs. A sign over the door reads, “THE UNION HOTEL BY JONATHAN DOODITTLE.” Another sign, partially cropped by the right edge of the painting, reads, “ELECTIO RIGHT OF CITIZ.” Lilac-purple clouds billow up over aquamarine-blue hills in the distance, against a blue sky. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had inscribed a rock near the lower center, “J. Quidor, N.Y. 189,” the next to last number obscured.
John Quidor, The Return of Rip Van Winkle, 1849, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1942.8.10

The Return of Rip Van Winkle

John Quidor · 1849 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.8.10

Bibliography

1942

  • Baur, John I.H. John Quidor 1801-1881. Exh. cat. Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1942.

1970

  • Sokol, David M. "John Quidor, Literary Painter." The American Art Journal 2 (Spring 1970): 60-73.

1973

  • Sokol, David M. John Quidor, Painter of American Legend. Exh. cat. Wichita Art Museum, Kansas, 1973.

1998

  • Torchia, Robert Wilson, with Deborah Chotner and Ellen G. Miles. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1998: 80-81.