The Arkansas Traveller
after an original painting by Edward Payson Washbourne
Leopold Grozelier (lithographer), J.H. Bufford (publisher), Boston, Massachusetts, c. 1859, hand-colored lithographic print on paper, Collection of Historic Arkansas Museum.
after an original painting by Edward Payson Washbourne
Leopold Grozelier (lithographer), J.H. Bufford (publisher), Boston, Massachusetts, c. 1859, hand-colored lithographic print on paper, Collection of Historic Arkansas Museum.
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Washbourne’s original 1856 Arkansas Traveler painting has been lost to history; no one knows exactly what happened to it. However, Historic Arkansas Museum’s collection includes a vibrant, hand-colored lithograph produced by Leopold Grozelier for J.H. Bufford and Sons, which is considered the most faithful reproduction of the original painting. (see What makes Arkansas, Arkansas?)
THE SOUTHERN ARTIST
By Mabel Washbourne Anderson
Sturm’s Oklahoma Magazine,
June-July, 1907.
previously published in
Vinita Daily Chieftain,
Indian Territory,
September 3, 1903
One of the most familiar pictures of the South is that of “The Arkansas Traveler,” while the musical air of that name is almost as widely known and recognized as “Dixie,” the beloved ode of the Southland. Though this picture is so commonly seen in the homes of the South and West, yet there are few paintings—with which the public is familiar—concerning whose origin so little is known.
Edward Pason Washbourne, the painter of the original picture, was Arkansas’ earliest artist of ability, and the picture depicts a perfect type of the cabin of a squatter in the wilderness of Arkansas, more than eighty years ago. Many a local colloquialism has found its origin in the supposed conversation that took place between the “Squatter” and the “Traveler.”
This humorous dialogue was printed in sheet music form and appeared shortly after the completion of the painting and was usually sold in connection with the lithographs.
The lost and bewildered “Arkansas Traveler” who approached the cabin and found the proprietor seated on an old whiskey barrel playing the fiddle, as shown in the picture, was Col. S. C. Faulkner, author of the story and the musical air, “The Arkansas Traveler,” a man well known in that section of Arkansas at that time.
The stranger and the hoosier engaged in conversation and quite a lengthy dialogue takes place between them, a portion of which is as follows:
(Stranger): As I am not likely to reach another house tonight, can you let me stop with you?
(Squatter): My house leaks, there’s only one dry spot in it, and Sal and me sleep on that.
(Stranger): Well, why don’t you finish covering your house and stop the leaks?
(Squatter): It’s been raining all day.
(Stranger): Well, why don’t you do it in dry weather?
(Squatter): It don’t leak then.
This pertinent reply has created an adage familiar in almost every section of the country.
Opie Reed, the novelist, called the newspaper which he founded in Little Rock, Arkansas, after this picture, a paper still published under the title “The Arkansas Traveler.”
Thus the picture and its title have been kept before the public for almost half a century.
Quite an amusing incident, in connection with this famous picture occurred in one of the large towns of the Indian Territory recently, and shows the ignorance among the masses concerning the picture and its origin.
The wife of a well-to-do cattle man had moved into town from the ranch and previous to her coming had directed the husband to make some purchases in the way of furniture and parlor ornaments. Among other things a handsome copy of “The Arkansas Traveler” had been selected and paid for, but the good wife denounced the painting in emphatic terms, declaring that no picture with “whiskey” marked upon it should grace her walls. It was vain for the clerk to expostulate and endeavor to explain what the picture was and the period it represented. She was obdurate and he was told to keep the picture and to sell it for whatever he chose.
In consequence a certain young lady possessed herself of the same for a mere song. As a fitting climax to the ludicrous incident the old lady gave the proceeds to the cause of Foreign Missions.
Rev. Cephas Washbourne, father of the artist, was associated with Dr. Kingsbury, Dr. Worcester and others of missionary fame among the Indians. Dr. Washbourne was long and extensively known as the superintendent of Dwight Mission among the Cherokees of Arkansas. He gave the name of “Dwight” to this mission in honor of Dr. Dwight, a distinguished divine and friend of missions.
In 1818 Tol-on-tus-ky, the principal chief of the Arkansas Cherokees, requested Jeremiah Evans, treasurer of the American Board of Missions, to found a mission among his people, and in the autumn of that year Mr. Washbourne was sent by that board as agent to the old nation in Georgia in which capacity he labored for one year. In the fall of 1819 he was instructed to commence his journey to Arkansas and found a mission among the Cherokees. In November, 1819, in company with his associate missionaries, Mr. Washbourne began his journey to the wilds of Arkansas, for at that time Arkansas was a perfect “terra incognita” and the way to get there was unknown. After fourteen days’ travel they reached the Mississippi at a point called Walnut Hills, where Vicksburg now stands. On this journey to his missionary field, Mr. Washbourne stopped at the post of Arkansas, which was then the seat of the government of the Territory of Arkansas. From thence he came to Little Rock on the first steamboat that ever ascended the Arkansas river above the post of Arkansas, and as a matter equally worthy of note he preached the first sermon ever delivered in Little Rock, which consisted then of a little frame shanty with a scanty supply of drugs and medicines and a little cabin made of logs with the bark on, where the sermon was delivered to an audience of fourteen men and women. These two cabins mentioned were the only buildings at that time on the site of the present city of Little Rock which gave no promise then of a splendid future, of the beautiful capital of a sovereign state.
Rev. Mr. Washbourne remained at Dwight until 1828 when he and his faithful missionary friends followed the Cherokees further west and established another missionary station near the stream called Sallisaw, to which he gave the name of New Dwight. Here at this new missionary home, Edward Pason Washbourne, the artist of “The Arkansas Traveler” fame, was born on the 17th day of November, 1831. In 1850 his father moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and became pastor of the Presbyterian church at that place. Here in 1851 Edward, the artist, opened a studio and began to paint. He had evinced a talent at an early age and without instruction, and guided by his genius alone he began life as a self-taught artist.
The portraits and landscapes painted by him in his boyhood are worthy the brush of many an older and carefully trained artist. Many of these early paintings are yet to be seen in the old Washbourne home in Russellville, Arkansas. These pictures evince, in a very flattering and remarkable degree, artistic talent, and were painted long before he ever conceived the idea of “The Arkansas Traveler.”
From Fort Smith the artist went to New York and studied under Elliott, the great American painter. His work, during his brief stay there, was approved by eminent judges. Edward Washbourne, like his father, was a fine student with a remarkably retentive memory. He loved the classics and could repeat page after page of Virgil or a whole oration from Cicero. In the fall of 1858 while he and his brother were on their way to try their skill as fishermen, in the Illinois bayou, Edward remarked that he believed he would paint a picture and call it “The Arkansas Traveler.” A few days afterwards he canvassed a frame and began to paint some characters of the picture. One day he and his brother visited their father’s old home at Dwight to look at the memorable spring that once slaked the thirst of that noble little missionary band and in passing one of the old mission houses they saw a young girl holding a looking glass in one hand, while with the other she combed and brushed a lovely suit of hair. They both laughed at this, but the incident made such an impression upon Edward’s mind that immediately upon reaching home he sketched the character of the girl holding the glass and combing her hair, together with the traveler, who was Col. Faulkner, as previously mentioned. These characters are still retained in the lithographs. There at Norristown, Pope county, in 1858 must be given as the place and time at which the first conception entered the mind of the artist, Edward Washbourne, to make and execute the remarkable and famous picture, “The Arkansas Traveler.”
Mr. Washbourne painted three different views before he became satisfied with his task; the third and final one was given to the public and is now a familiar sight in almost every southern home. The first two scenes, so different from the third, are still in the possession of the Washbourne family and stand unframed just as they came from the hand of the painter.
This brilliant young artist died in Little Rock in the twenty-eighth year of his age. Thus terminated in the morning of life Arkansas’ first and most gifted artist. Had he lived to attain the allotted age of man, with his high ambition, his rapid improvement and devotion to his profession, he would no doubt have been classed and recognized among the first artists of his day.