Oil painting of the steamboat Fleetwood, 1940

Oil painting of the steamboat "Fleetwood" by Harlan Hubbard. Kentucky writer and artist Harlan Hubbard (1900-1988) recorded his and wife Anna’s lives on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in words and images. They traveled the rivers on a shantyboat and lived very simply in Payne Hollow, Trimble Co., Ky. Hubbard recalled in the book Shantyboat: A River Way of Life that “when I had first begun to paint, I turned naturally to the river, which had attracted me from my earliest years. I carried my sketch box along its shores, on canoe trips, and on steamboats.”

Filson Museum Collection

1944.3.2