N. C. Wyeth became one of America’s foremost illustrators, especially renowned for his images accompanying some of the most popular novels of all time, including Kidnapped, The Black Arrow, Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, Westward Ho!, Robinson Crusoe, The Deerslayer, and many more. Anthony and Mr. Bonnyfeather was used as the frontispiece for Volume I of the Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. 1934 edition of Hervey Allen's novel Anthony Adverse. Though somewhat forgotten today, the novel was hugely popular in its time—so much so that Hollywood adapted it into a blockbuster film in 1936, starring Fredric March, Olivia de Havilland, Edmund Gwenn, Claude Rains, Akim Tamiroff, and Ralph Morgan.
Allen’s story, which runs more than 1,200 pages, takes place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and follows a peripatetic soldier of fortune from birth to grave throughout Europe and North America, with endless twists and turns of fate. Here Anthony is seen with his maternal grandfather, Mr. Bonnyfeather, upon the ramparts of Casa da Bonnyfeather in Leghorn, Italy, hoisting an unseen English flag. Beyond its interest as a depiction of an episode from Anthony's life and as a fine example of the artist's talents, the painting carries added significance: the model for Anthony's figure was likely none other than N.C.’s son, Andrew Wyeth.
