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EVERETT SHINN.
“Rip Van Winkle.” Gouache and watercolor on board. 407x288 mm; 16x11
3
/
8
inches.
Signed in image, lower left. Created for the story published in Coronet Magazine, 1939.
[10,000/15,000]
A BEAUTIFULLY DETAILED PAINTING BY SHINN
for one of his favorite stories.This particular image
of the young, intoxicated Rip resting against a tree with his flagon of liquor in hand while the group of
dwarves look on. It is similar to, but not exactly like, the endpapers in his book version of Washington
Irving’s RipVanWinkle, illustrated by Shinn. (NewYork: Garden City Publishing, 1939).
In the foreword to the book, Shinn tells the story of the “very curious affair” that stimulated his desire
to illustrate Irving’s immortal tale. He describes how he picked up a dusty old copy of the book in a
cottage he was renting at the foot of the Catskill Mountains the prior autumn.Wandering outside, he
believed he had found the exact location where it took place, and fell into his own waking dream
where, through a rainstorm, he followed Rip to an old cabin but lost sight of him in the woods. After
his landlord tells him the old cabin was built by a man named VanWinkle but that there hadn’t been
a rainstorm for weeks, Shinn, still feeling his still soggy clothing, remarks that he believes every word of
the tale and “went home and started work on my illustrations”—from the Foreword,April, 1939.