Dust Jacket
Date1926
Artist
Frank Earle Schoonover
(American illustrator and painter, 1877–1972)
Illustration CitationDust jacket (cover) for The Wolf, the Cat and the Nightingale, by Stanley Hart Cauffman (Philadelphia: The Penn Publishing Company, 1926) and for The White Company, by Arthur Conan Doyle (New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1927)
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions40 1/4 × 26 1/4 in. (102.2 × 66.7 cm)
frame: 47 1/2 × 33 1/2 in. (120.7 × 85.1 cm)
frame: 47 1/2 × 33 1/2 in. (120.7 × 85.1 cm)
Credit LineAnonymous gift in memory of William J. Touhey, Wilmington, DE, 2015
Object number2015-66
On View
On viewClassificationsPAINTING
Label TextFrank Schoonover's three title characters bear nicknames related to their roles in an adventure story about the 16th century wars of religion in France. The artist used costume and facial expressions to identify three men on a trek to Paris, site of mob violence in which each one will play a part: a young aristocrat, a determined military man, and a dreamy minstrel. The castle in the background and the autumnal colors of the trees—Schoonover’s rendering of how the sun “gilded the hills of Burgundy”—add a sense of place and mood. The image also appeared a year later as a dust cover for Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company, a novel about the Hundred Years’ War which included similar noblemen, men-at-arms and troubadours.The historical novel was a genre that retained its popularity well into the 20th century after its rise in the mid-19th century with writers such as Sir Walter Scott. 
