Hoosiers Nest, (painting).

Hoosiers Nest, (painting).

Boyd, Monimia Bunnell, 1824-1862, painter.

Hoosiers Nest, (painting).

45 9/16 x 65 1/2 in. (115.7 x 166.4 cm)

A visitor encounters an Indiana pioneer family's cabin in the woods surrounded by livestock and children (hoosieroons).

History -- United States -- Frontier

History -- United States -- Indiana

Figure group -- Family

Occupation -- Other -- Pioneer

Architecture exterior -- Domestic -- Cottage

Animal -- Cattle

Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 Accession Number: 81.21.17

Formerly in the collection of Indiana State Legislature for the State Library, 1849.

Boyd, Monimia Bunnell, 1850.

Boyd, Samuel S., Dr., 1862.

High School, Dublin, Indiana 1865.

Boyd, Monimia Bunnell, descendant of, ca. 1929.

Bunnell, Minnie E., Hagerstown, Indiana before 1954, until 1956.

Edward Eberstedt & Sons, New York, New York 1957.

Bequest of Garbisch, Edgar W. & Bernice Chrysler, 1981.

The painting was inspired by John Finley's poem, "The Hoosier's Nest," first distributed in the "Indianapolis Journal" on January 1, 1833. As was the practice at the time, the poem was published separately on a flyer known as a "carriers' address," which was sold by newsboys for tips during the holidays. Finley's ten stanza poem, which became hugely popular, conjures up rustic images of frontier life and rugged pioneer idealism. The poem tells the story of a visitor who arrives at an Indiana pioneer family's cabin in the woods surrounded by animals and children he calls hoosieroons. According to the Indiana Historical Society, Indiana legislators persuaded the artist to donate the painting to the Indiana State Library in 1849. A year later when the painting was criticized in an Indianapolis newspaper, the artist requested the return of her painting. Legend has it that her husband's attempts to retrieve the painting were rejected and he was forced to cut the painting from the frame. After the artist's death in 1862, her husband donated the painting to a Dublin, Indiana high school, where it remained until the school was torn down. The painting was then given back to the artist's family, and ended up in the hands of Minnie Bunnell, who publicized it in a 1949 "Palladium" story that detailed the painting's rise to fame, and subsequent criticism and return to the artist's family. A photograph of the framed painting accompanied the article, and later appeared in black and white in Wilbur Peat's 1954 publication "Pioneer Painters of Indiana." In 1966, when an editor at the "Palladium" tried to locate the painting for the Indiana sesquicentennial, he discovered that it had been sold to an East Coast collector.

Strazdes, Diana, "American paintings and sculpture to 1945 in the Carnegie Museum of Art," New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Carnegie Museum of Art, 1992.

Inventory staff, 2002.

Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, 1990.

Strazdes, Diana, "American paintings and sculpture to 1945 in the Carnegie Museum of Art," New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Carnegie Museum of Art, 1992, pg. 105.

The information provided about this artwork was compiled as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture database, designed to provide descriptive and location information on artworks by American artists in public and private collections worldwide.

Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, P.O. Box 37012, MRC 970, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012

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