1486
Indian Pulling Baby on Toboggan
FES Title: Winter Subject, Indian pulling baby on tobaggon
Alternate Titles: Winter Migration; Indian Family and Tobaggon
Date: 10/06/1926
Size: 41″H x 32″W
Medium: oil_single-prime-lincanvas
Type: illustration
Published: Country Gentleman, February 1927: cover.
no caption
Inscription: lr: F.E. Schoonover / ’26
Annotations:
Exhibitions:
Comments: non-trany 4×5; form 11/18/07
index; edit
Commentary: Schoonover writes to Miss Brenner on March 9, 1927, in response to the query she sent to Country Gentleman about this cover illustration. She asked about the ‘type’ of people depicted. The response he wrote:
“I really had in mind the Montagnais of Eastern Canada. You will find the Montagnais (mountain or hill people) living now about Lake St. John…many of them have taken the white trappers for their companions, so really they are almost all half or quarter breeds…I lived with these Indians a long time…
All the details in the cover drawing are absolutely correct. The straight snow-shoe (the Montagnais type) – the high curve of the sled with its caribou lashings – the manner in which the Indian man has hooked the tump
[sic] line about his forearm in order to rest his forearm and neck for a few moments and the fact that there is a crust on the snow, so that the Indians do not sink deep into the snow – is [sic] all correct and I trust interesting to you.” (archives, correspondence)
Schoonover’s sketch for this work is #1486s.
Provenance: American Illustrators Gallery, New York; private collection