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DESCENDED IN THE MILLEN FAMILY
Lot 137
Frank Stick(1884-1966)The scent of Cyril, though faint and fainter and smothered under swirling snow, was not too dim for Lad's sensitive nostrils to catch and hold
26 September – 7 October 2025, 12:00 EDT
Skinner Marlborough, MassachusettsSold for US$7,040 inc. premium
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Jelena James
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale
Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer
Jewel Bernier
Cataloguer
Frank Stick (1884-1966)
The scent of Cyril, though faint and fainter and smothered under swirling snow, was not too dim for Lad's sensitive nostrils to catch and hold
signed 'Frank Stick' (lower left)
oil on canvas
36 x 25 in. (91.4 x 63.5 cm)
Painted circa 1920.
signed 'Frank Stick' (lower left)
oil on canvas
36 x 25 in. (91.4 x 63.5 cm)
Painted circa 1920.
Footnotes
Provenance
The collection of Eli Moffatt Millen, editor at The Ladies' Home Journal (gifted directly from the artist, circa 1920).
By descent in the family of the previous to the present private collection.
Literature
Illustrated for Albert Payson Terhune, "The Tracker", The Ladies' Home Journal, Philadelphia, December 1921, vol. 38, p. 32, (as The scent of Cyril, though faint and fainter and smothered under swirling snow, was not too dim for Lad's sensitive nostrils to catch and hold.).
N.B.
Artist, outdoorsman, and conservationist Frank Stick was part of a golden era of illustration and sporting artists that also included the likes of Frank Weston Benson, Aiden Lassell Ripley, Ogden Pleissner (also represented in the present sale), and N.C. Wyeth. Stick was born in Huron, South Dakota, and spent his adolescence immersed in the outdoors of Wisconsin and Montana. He fished, hunted, hiked, and worked as a mountain guide and a cook at a logging camp. At around age 20, he began to write and illustrate stories about his hunting and fishing adventures for sporting magazines, recalling that, when he was outdoors, "all the time I studied the forests and lakes and mountains, and the ways of the creatures that inhabited them, and put my impressions down with pencil and brush".
In 1906, at the invitation of Howard Pyle, Stick spent three years studying at the Brandywine School of Art in Delaware alongside N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, and W.H.D. Koerner. He became good friends with Koerner in particular, and remained close with him throughout his life. Stick subsequently returned to northern Wisconsin and lived in a small cabin on Squirrel Lake, before moving in 1917 to New Jersey and building a home and studio on Lake Deal. He continued to produce stories and illustrations for some of the most popular magazines of the time, including Field & Stream, Rod and Gun, Sports Afield, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Ladies Home Journal until 1929, when he became disillusioned with the world of commercial art. His worry was that he was becoming a painter rather than an artist: "The artist develops from within. He is ruled by spirit. The painter works from a technical knowledge entirely". He subsequently swore off commercial work for the rest of his life, although he would always continue to paint and exhibit for his own and others' enjoyment.
The present work was painted during Stick's final decade as a commercial artist. It shows a scene from "The Tracker: Lad Helps a Foe" by Albert Payson Terhune (1872-1942). Terhune was a collie breeder who owned and operated Sunnybank Kennels in New Jersey and wrote over 30 dog-focused novels and short stories. "The Tracker" is one of his "Lad Stories" that feature Terhune's own real-life Rough Collie, Lad. Lad also appeared in one of Terhune's best-known novels, aptly titled Lad: A Dog (1919), which was made into a film by Warner Brothers in 1962.
"The Tracker" tells the story of a troublesome boy named Cyril who finds joy in tormenting Lad, the family collie, who is too sweet a dog to retaliate at the child. On one blizzardy night, Cyril finally gets scolded for his cruelty, but he decides to run away rather than face punishment. He soon gets lost in the dark winter night, and it is ultimately Lad who tracks him down through the swirling snow and saves him.