The Return of Rip Van Winkle

1849

John Quidor

Artist, American, 1801 - 1881

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.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

Washington Irving's Sketch Book, published serially in London and New York journals in 1820, captivated readers worldwide. Quidor's Return of Rip Van Winkle accurately sets the scene in the Catskills and shows brick houses with step-gabled, Dutch roofs. The mountains and buildings are the only familiar elements to poor Rip, who'd been drugged by Henry Hudson's enchanted crew twenty years earlier. Having slept through the Revolutionary War, Rip finds a flag bearing "a singular assemblage of stars and stripes," while the face of King George on the tavern's sign has been repainted to that of an unknown George named Washington.

Quidor's painting is a perfect pantomime to the climax of Irving's story, as Rip discovers -- to his bewilderment -- that he has a son and grandson, both namesakes. The scene is animated by thick strokes of pure white paint, phantom highlights within the golden, dreamlike haze. Quidor's obsession with depicting Rip Van Winkle has been interpreted as indicative of the artist's own search for acceptance. Although Quidor spent four years training under a society portraitist and occasionally exhibited pictures of literary themes at the National Academy of Design, he had to earn his living by painting signs and decorating fire engines.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II, pages 81-86, which is available as a free PDF (21MB).

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Andrew W. Mellon Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 101 x 126.5 cm (39 3/4 x 49 13/16 in.)
    framed: 139.1 x 159.4 x 9.5 cm (54 3/4 x 62 3/4 x 3 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1942.8.10

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Augustus W. Oberwalder [Augustus De Forest], New York);[1] purchased 13 December 1920 by Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York; his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1942 to NGA.
[1] Quidor offered the painting for sale to the American Art Union in 1850; the offer was declined and the painting returned as of February 1851. See American Art Union, Register of Works of Art 1848-1851 and Letters from Artists, both at the New York Historical Society (copies NGA curatorial files).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1850

  • Twenty-Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1850, no. 31.

1921

  • Exhibition of Paintings by Early American Portrait Painters, The Union League Club, New York, December 1921, no. 1.

1928

  • Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue.

1939

  • Life in America [A Special Loan Exhibition of Paintings Held During the Period of the New York World's Fair], The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1939, no. 113,repro.

1940

  • A Souvenir of Romanticism in America, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1940, unnumbered.

1942

  • John Quidor 1801-1881, Brooklyn Museum, 1942, no. 3, repro.

1943

  • American Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1943.

1951

  • American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1951.

1952

  • [Opening exhibition of new art gallery], Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Lynchburg, Virginia, 1952-1953, no cat.

  • 300th Anniversary, Senate House State Historic Site, Kingston, New York, 1952, no cat.

1953

  • American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1953.

1955

  • Recent Rediscoveries in American Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, 1955, no. 81, repro.

  • American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1955.

1964

  • Man: Glory, Jest, and Riddle, A Survey of the Human Form Through the Ages, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1964-1965, no. 212.

1965

  • John Quidor, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica; The Rochester Memorial Art Gallery; Albany Institute of History and Art, 1965-1966, no. 4.

1968

  • [Opening exhibition of American art], National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C., 1968, no cat.

  • Arts in the Young Republic, Ackland Memorial Art Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1968.

1970

  • 19th-Century America: Paintings and Sculptures, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970, no. 40.

1973

  • John Quidor, Wichita Art Museum, 1973, no cat.

1974

  • The Painter's America: Rural and Urban Life, 1810-1910, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Oakland Museum, 1974-1975, no. 16.

1976

  • America As Art, National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C., 1976, no. 98.

1987

  • New Horizons: American Painting 1840-1910 (organized by Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service), State Russian Museum, Leningrad; State Art Museum of Belorussia, Minsk; State Museum of Russian Art, Kiev, 1987-1988, no. 28.

1995

  • Loan for display with permanent collection, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, 1995-1996.

2009

  • Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture, The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, 2009-2010, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1928

  • Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, unnumbered.

1939

  • Life in America: A Special Loan Exhibition of Paintings Held during the Period of the New York World's Fair. Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1939: 83, fig. 113.

1942

  • Baur, John I.H. John Quidor 1801-1881. Exh. cat. Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1942: 8-9, 48, pl. 3.

1967

  • Callow, James T. Kindred Spirits: Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists, 1807-1855. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1967: 188.

1970

  • American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 92, repro.

1976

  • Wilmerding, John. American Art. Hammondsworth, England, and New York, 1976: 114, pl. 132.

1980

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 68, no. 15, color repro.

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 214, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 82-3, color repro. 100.

1982

  • Wolf, Bryan Jay. Romantic Re-Vision: Culture and Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century American Painting and Literature. Chicago, 1982: 152-173, pl. 41.

1983

  • Brown, Milton W. One Hundred Masterpieces of American Painting from Public Collections in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., 1983: 62, pl. 63.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 547, no. 828, color repro.

1987

  • Wilson, Christopher Kent. "John Quidor's The Return of Rip Van Winkle at the National Gallery of Art: The Interpretation of an American Myth." American Art Journal 19 (1987): 23-45.

1988

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 78, no. 16, color repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 269, repro.

  • National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1992: 227, repro.

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: 81-86, color repro.

2009

  • Moore, Charlotte Emans. "Art as Text, War as Context: The Art Gallery of the Metropolitan Fair, New York City's Artistic Community, and the Civil War." Ph.D. diss. Boston University, 2009: xii, 24, 554, fig. 1-6.

Inscriptions

lower center on rock: J. Quidor, / N.Y. / 18[4?]9

Wikidata ID

Q20187939

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