Author and Illustrator

James Daugherty is considered one of the important founders of modern art in America. However, he was best known during his lifetime as the illustrator of some fifty books and the author of a dozen more.

Nearly two decades after Daugherty illustrated White's Daniel Boone: Wilderness Scout, he was given the opportunity by the Viking Press to write and illustrate his own biography of Boone. The result, Daniel Boone , was published in 1939 and won the prestigious John Newbery Medal, then the highest honor for the author of a children's book.

Daniel Boone was written with the events of the coming Second World War looming in the background. Daugherty saw Boone as the embodiment of America's sturdy pioneer values, and argued that this country's ability to summon those values again would soon be tested by the crisis to come.

Hail and Farewell, Daniel Boone

James Daugherty believed that today's values contrasted poorly with those of Daniel Boone's time. The original manuscript for Daniel Boone shows that Daugherty tempered some of his ideas for publication. In the book's introduction, consisting of a letter written by Daugherty in the spirit of Boone, the original typescript reads: "You were not a leader of business enterprise like Mr. Henderson. You didn't play along with the fixers and promoters. You belong to the Indian and the buffalo. You were a romantic. You had no social consciousness, responsibility. You are a free wild rider in a lost dream, dear to a mechanized steam, chain store, assembly line age of suburbanites, subway riders and commuters. Hail and farewell, Daniel Boone."

Sketches and paintings from Daniel Boone, Wilderness Scout

Sketch 1  |  Sketch 2  |  Sketch 3
   Sketch 4  |  Sketch 5  |  Sketch 6
Sketch of Vision  |  Painting of Vision
Sketch of Escape  |  Painting of Escape
Sketch of Struggle  |  Painting of Struggle