A Rounded Shape on a Little Hillside Caught His Eyes

The present work was a frontispiece illustration for a story by Lawrence Mott, "Love in the Wilderness," in the November 1906 issue of The Outing Magazine. The subject of Mott's story revolved around Chictou Bernard, "a French Canadian trapper accused of poaching on 'company lands' and saved from the pursuing police [Clyde] by his devoted girlfriend, Narron...In a romantic narrative like this, Wyeth could have chosen from many moments to create an illustration enhancing the theme of love in this story. Instead, he selected the dramatic point when Clyde discovers the half-frozen heroine. The viewer must imagine what happened before this point and what will unfold next, but the ending is not divulged. By choosing not to illustrate the outcome, Wyeth leaves more to the imagination, and the moment of suspense is heightened by visualization. As [Howard] Pyle instructed, Wyeth used his skill at portraying man in nature to create a painting that works with the writing and does not steal from its emotional content." (V. Manning in Visions of Adventure: N.C. Wyeth and the Brandywine Artists, New York, 2000, p. 87)

This work is included in the N.C. Wyeth catalogue raisonné database that is being compiled by the Brandywine River Museum and Conservancy, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.