According to James H. Nottage, Vice President and Chief Curatorial Office of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, this painting “is the lead work in the serialized version of The Covered Wagon.… Signature and date show clearly. In my opinion, your painting is one of the strongest interior paintings for the series. As was required at the time, interior works are usually more of the vignette type and less finished and formal. The Covered Wagon is one of the most significant novels of its time, the basis of an epic silent film and a key to the career of Koerner.”

PROVENANCE
Saturday Evening Post, Curtis Publishing
Walter Dean Fuller, President, Curtis Publishing
Carol & Jack Merritt, PA, by descent
Present owner, by descent

LITERATURE
Emerson Hough, “The Covered Wagon” The Saturday Evening Post (Independence Square, PA: April 1, 1922), page 3, illustrated