A Free-Singing Rider in a Lost Dream

Along the trails of Daniel Boone
The phantom deer doth rise
And all lost wild America
Is glowing in his eyes.

No one has ever depicted the mythic Daniel Boone as well as James Daugherty. Born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1887, Daugherty studied at the Corcoran Art School, under William Merritt Chase at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, and with Frank Branwyn in England. He returned from Europe in 1907 and settled in New York City.

Daugherty became fascinated with color abstraction and, particularly, with French painter Robert Delaunay's ideas of "simultaneous contrast." Gail Levin, Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art notes that from 1915 through 1922, Daugherty "concentrated on painting innovative abstractions stressing color volumes."

Daugherty was also an illustrator of books, and Stewart Edward White's 1922 book, Daniel Boone: Wilderness Scout, was his first important commission. It came at a time when many people were frightened by waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who did not speak English and were not Protestant. This fear motivated a search for things that were truly American, and the people living in the Appalachian mountains were hailed as America's "contemporary ancestors."

In Daugherty's oils for the book one sees both the heroic view of Boone, the prototypical Appalachian pioneer, and the results of Daugherty's experiments with color abstraction. The paintings are, therefore, as much a record of the founding impulses of modern art in America as they are excellent examples of book illustration.

Click here for images of James Daugherty sketches, studies, and paintings.