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拍品專文
When N.C. Wyeth illustrated Alfred Henry Lewis’s The Throwback: A Romance of the Southwest in 1905, he was only a few years removed from his training at Howard Pyle’s school of art—but already unmistakably himself. Still in his early 20s, he was earning recognition for his commitment to “true, solid American subjects,” and would soon become instrumental in shaping the visual language of the American cowboy. (One Nation: Patriots and Pirates Portrayed by N. C. Wyeth and James Wyeth, Rockland, Maine, 2000) Beyond the classic adventure literature he would go on to illustrate, from Treasure Island to Robinson Crusoe, Wyeth’s early frontier imagery stands among the most iconic work of his career, renowned for its dynamic immediacy and the artist’s firsthand encounters that informed it.
“Threw the Bridle Reign on Sathanthus’ Neck and Rolled and Lighted a Cigarette” was one of four images Wyeth created for Lewis’s novel, published by Outing Publishing Company in 1906. The others—“Pedro of the Ear,” cried Moonlight, “I owed you that”; Moonlight was lost in a contemplation of the Cross; and Behind not two hundred miles away, were two Indians (all unlocated)—helped propel a story that Delaware’s The Evening Journal described as “full of life and interest from start to finish.” The plot, steeped in inheritance intrigue, concealed identities, murderous intent, and a sweeping love story, offered ample material for Wyeth’s instinct for drama. As The Evening Journal observed, “The illustrations, by N.C. Wyeth of this city, are such an effective adjunct of the story as to make it a matter of regret that there are not more of them.” (The Evening Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, April 18, 1906, p. 4)
Wyeth’s image illustrates one of the novel’s most gripping sequences, in which the insolent frontier hero, Old Tom Moonlight, faces down the “mad stallion” Sathanthus—a creature who, Lewis warned, “had killed one man” and “hoped to get a chance to kill another; for Sathanthus was well-named, being a born devil in his heart.” The scene unfolds like a contest of nerve and violence: “Sathanthus, blind, feet planted, heart on fire, stood like a statue.” When the blindfold came off, the stallion “winked and blinked, and shook his sinful head,” then launched into an escalating fury—skyward leaps, dead stops, plunges at right angles, and “a paroxysm of old-fashioned genuine, heartfelt, worm-fence bucking.” Moonlight stayed fixed in the saddle, cutting the air with his quirt and digging in his spurs, until the match turned mythic: the rider “threw the bridle-reins on Sathanthus’ neck and, searching forth a cornhusk wrapper, rolled and lighted a cigarette.” (The Throwback: A Romance of the Southwest, New York, 1906, pp. 135–137)
Wyeth seized on this passage and pushed it to full cinematic pitch. His illustration catches the instant after the chaos—the dust still lifting, the danger far from past—when Moonlight, seasoned and swaggering, casually lights a cigarette atop a horse that has murder in its heart. That gesture tells you almost everything author and artist wanted you to know about frontier nerve.
Wyeth’s image of escalating violence comes with the clarity of someone who truly understood how a furious horse moved. As a student under Pyle, the venerated illustrator instilled in him the conviction that “One must live in the picture.” (N.C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals, New York, 1972, p. 15) Wyeth took this doctrine seriously. His three trips West between 1904 and 1906—encouraged by his mentor—gave him an observational authority few illustrators aside from Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell could match. “During his visit to the West,” wrote Douglas Allen, “he followed the trails into the mountains and the cattle country. He took part in all its work and pleasures, and managed to get a real taste of all the activities available, from the carrying of the mail and driving a stage to riding the range. He spent time with remote trading posts and with various Indian tribes, absorbing their customs and way of life and making careful observations of all he saw.” (N.C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals, p. 34)
That rigor paid off. By 1907, Outing magazine declared him “one of our greatest, if not our greatest, painter of American outdoor life.” (Outing, 1907) This illustration is pure proof. Sathanthus—every muscle coiled, the ground churned beneath him, the rider unshaken, striking a match—resolves into a tableau of Western audacity. In the context of The Throwback, Wyeth’s image serves as more than accompaniment. It heightens the story’s central dynamic: the coexistence of danger and poise, of violence barely reined in. Sathanthus embodies the West’s volatility; the rider, its daredevil resolve. Between them hangs the very mythology Wyeth helped shape.
“Threw the Bridle Reign on Sathanthus’ Neck and Rolled and Lighted a Cigarette” was one of four images Wyeth created for Lewis’s novel, published by Outing Publishing Company in 1906. The others—“Pedro of the Ear,” cried Moonlight, “I owed you that”; Moonlight was lost in a contemplation of the Cross; and Behind not two hundred miles away, were two Indians (all unlocated)—helped propel a story that Delaware’s The Evening Journal described as “full of life and interest from start to finish.” The plot, steeped in inheritance intrigue, concealed identities, murderous intent, and a sweeping love story, offered ample material for Wyeth’s instinct for drama. As The Evening Journal observed, “The illustrations, by N.C. Wyeth of this city, are such an effective adjunct of the story as to make it a matter of regret that there are not more of them.” (The Evening Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, April 18, 1906, p. 4)
Wyeth’s image illustrates one of the novel’s most gripping sequences, in which the insolent frontier hero, Old Tom Moonlight, faces down the “mad stallion” Sathanthus—a creature who, Lewis warned, “had killed one man” and “hoped to get a chance to kill another; for Sathanthus was well-named, being a born devil in his heart.” The scene unfolds like a contest of nerve and violence: “Sathanthus, blind, feet planted, heart on fire, stood like a statue.” When the blindfold came off, the stallion “winked and blinked, and shook his sinful head,” then launched into an escalating fury—skyward leaps, dead stops, plunges at right angles, and “a paroxysm of old-fashioned genuine, heartfelt, worm-fence bucking.” Moonlight stayed fixed in the saddle, cutting the air with his quirt and digging in his spurs, until the match turned mythic: the rider “threw the bridle-reins on Sathanthus’ neck and, searching forth a cornhusk wrapper, rolled and lighted a cigarette.” (The Throwback: A Romance of the Southwest, New York, 1906, pp. 135–137)
Wyeth seized on this passage and pushed it to full cinematic pitch. His illustration catches the instant after the chaos—the dust still lifting, the danger far from past—when Moonlight, seasoned and swaggering, casually lights a cigarette atop a horse that has murder in its heart. That gesture tells you almost everything author and artist wanted you to know about frontier nerve.
Wyeth’s image of escalating violence comes with the clarity of someone who truly understood how a furious horse moved. As a student under Pyle, the venerated illustrator instilled in him the conviction that “One must live in the picture.” (N.C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals, New York, 1972, p. 15) Wyeth took this doctrine seriously. His three trips West between 1904 and 1906—encouraged by his mentor—gave him an observational authority few illustrators aside from Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell could match. “During his visit to the West,” wrote Douglas Allen, “he followed the trails into the mountains and the cattle country. He took part in all its work and pleasures, and managed to get a real taste of all the activities available, from the carrying of the mail and driving a stage to riding the range. He spent time with remote trading posts and with various Indian tribes, absorbing their customs and way of life and making careful observations of all he saw.” (N.C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals, p. 34)
That rigor paid off. By 1907, Outing magazine declared him “one of our greatest, if not our greatest, painter of American outdoor life.” (Outing, 1907) This illustration is pure proof. Sathanthus—every muscle coiled, the ground churned beneath him, the rider unshaken, striking a match—resolves into a tableau of Western audacity. In the context of The Throwback, Wyeth’s image serves as more than accompaniment. It heightens the story’s central dynamic: the coexistence of danger and poise, of violence barely reined in. Sathanthus embodies the West’s volatility; the rider, its daredevil resolve. Between them hangs the very mythology Wyeth helped shape.