Study for Delivering the Goods

The image for Delivering the Goods came to the artist in a dream.  Its enigmatic subject and its still, golden atmosphere do convey a haunting, even disturbing, dreamlike quality.  All the men in this slow-moving world look away from the massive, powerful bull that balances on a fragile barge.  In turn, the animal's eyes seem to seek us out.

Bo Bartlett describes his allegorical scene as “Apocalypse Now meets George Caleb Bingham."  There are echoes here of Bingham, the noted nineteenth-century painter of Western river scenes.  The hazy light also recalls Philadelphian Thomas Eakins' shimmering Schuylkill River paintings.  Bartlett carefully balanced the emphatic horizontals inherent in a river piece against the more delicate verticals of the barge pole, the bull's tail, and the standing figures.

This work is a study for a larger painting in the collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.