On May 15, 1914, the artist wrote to his mother, "Skipper Roarin' Bill Higginson is facing me, lashed to the wheel of his brig with a mountain of water rising behind him. It looks wet, is full of storm, and is otherwise quite the most compelling thing I have done in a long time." (Betsy James Wyeth, ed., p. 462). A letter from Wyeth to the original purchaser explains "The character of Capt. Bill Higginson of Nantucket is wholly imaginative--first conceived by James Connolly, the sea story writer, and secondly by myself in an effort to illustrate his yarn. Although following Connolly's data regarding costume, character and a few other details, my purpose was to transcend all this and tell a bigger story of wind, salt air, and the sea surrounding the nucleus of my subject the captain" (N. C. Wyeth to J. H. Curl, undated, private collection).

Scribner's editor Joseph H. Chapin wrote, "Connolly...was delighted with your illustrations. The three of them are now in our Fifth Avenue window and are attracting a good deal of attention although I have n't had any offers." (JHC to NCW, July 27, 1914, Wyeth Family Archives). In a letter of early August, 1914, Wyeth wrote to his mother, "My pictures in the current Scribner's seem to be winning considerable notice and I must answer further inquiries for prices" (NCW to HZW, dated in another hand Aug 7, 1914, Wyeth Family Archives).

This was one of Wyeth's best known illustrations; the painting was exhibited in Wilmington, Philadelphia and San Francisco, and printed in 1937 in an article reviewing the best illustrations from Scribner's Magazines of the preceding 50 years. Wyeth's fellow Pyle student Dean Cornwell published a very similar painting in the July 1916 issue of Red Book Magazine; Cifford Ashley published a similar image in Collier's Magazine in Jan. 1917; and Wyeth himself adapted his design for "Cap'n Storm-Along," an illustration for a 1938 music book for Ginn and Company (see NCW 601).

Brandywine River Museum of Art