Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” inspired Quidor to paint the climactic moment from this famous tale. Ichabod Crane is a prickly and stuck-up schoolmaster and a bumbling suitor for the lovely Katrina, who uses him to make her beau jealous. The pompous twit is no match for the clever locals, and he disappears, chased away by the headless horseman through a darkened wood. Irving’s educated nitwit, strapping local boy and flirtatious beauty would reappear as folk characters throughout American literature in the nineteenth century.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
- Title
-
The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane
- Artist
- Date
- 1858
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 26 7⁄8 x 33 7⁄8 in. (68.3 x 86.1 cm.)
- Credit Line
-
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Museum purchase made possible in part by the Catherine Walden Myer Endowment, the Julia D. Strong Endowment, and the Director’s Discretionary Fund
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on canvas
- Classifications
- Keywords
-
- Landscape – forest
- Landscape – time – evening
- Equestrian
- Literature – character – Icahabod Crane
- Literature – Irving – Legend of Sleepy Hollow
- Literature – character – Headless Horseman
- Object Number
-
1994.120
- Palette
- Emoji
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI
