Today, August 8, 2021, is the 125th anniversary of the birth of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Just last week, a few miles from Rawlings’s home in Cross Creek, Florida, I had an opportunity to see an extraordinary exhibit at the University of Florida’s Harn Museum – A Florida Legacy: Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers. It was the final week of the exhibit, and my expectations about what I would see were far surpassed. I was delighted at the wide range of artistic expression on display. This gift from Mr. and Mrs. Vickers is certainly a treasure for all Floridians to enjoy for generations to come, and this particular exhibit was only a fraction of the full collection. There were formal portraits, breezy beach scenes, dramatic landscapes, studies of flora and citrus fruit, a few examples of the Florida Highwaymen, and an impressive representation by female artists. Most of the works were by artists not familiar to me, but there were also pieces by some big names in American art – John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth. The staff at the Harn even created a playlist of Florida music on Spotify to accompany the exhibit – so fun! Music by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Frederick Delius, The Buena Vista Social Club, and of course, Jimmy Buffett. The Spotify playlist is at the Harn website link above.

One of the primary pieces that drew me in immediately was the original oil painting by N.C. Wyeth, used as the endpaper illustration for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s The Yearling. The painting portrays a blonde-headed Jody, the main character of the book, running barefoot along a sandy path in the Florida scrub, followed by his beloved pet deer, Flag.

Movement directly in front of him startled him so that he tumbled backward. The fawn lifted its face to his. It turned its head with a wide, wondering motion and shook him through with the stare of its liquid eyes. It was quivering. It made no effort to rise or run. Jody could not trust himself to move.

He whispered, “It’s me.”

The fawn lifted its nose, scenting him. He reached out one hand and laid it on the soft neck. The touch made him delirious. He moved forward on all fours until he was close beside it. He put his arms around its body. A light convulsion passed over it but it did not stir. He stroked its sides as gently as though the fawn were a china deer and he might break it. Its skin was softer than the white ‘coonskin knapsack. It was sleek and clean and had a sweet scent of grass.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), p. 170.

Like many of the artists featured in this exhibit, Rawlings came to Florida as a non-native. She observed the people and the natural environment of the Florida scrub, and drew upon her writing skills to weave stories of early American pioneers in an eerie and magical place – a place not easily imagined by those who had never traveled here. This magic is reflected in many of the pieces in the Vickers Collection, as artists from around the country and also Europe traveled to Florida, bringing their paintbrushes, palettes, oils, and canvasses, capturing the many facets of Florida in their art: tropical vegetation, fortress ruins, hidden dark rivers, spectacular beach skies. I hope you were among the people who visited this exhibition. If not, and if you are in Florida, keep an eye out for future exhibits at the Harn Museum of Art. I believe they already have a plan for a permanent rotation of some pieces from the collection in their galleries. I certainly look forward to seeing future exhibits drawn from this special treasury.