On Board Ship

Original watercolor/gouache illustration for Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Art size: 16 x 10 inches
• Framed size: 24 x 18 inches

This is the painting I did as an interior illustration for a new edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline.  This scene portrays Evangeline on board one of the ships during the British expulsion of the Acadians.

Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine (formerly part of Massachusetts.   He was graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick where he later was a professor.

The epic poem tells the story of expulsion of Acadians from Acadie, Nova Scotia in 1755 by the British, known as the Great Upheaval, le Grand Dérangement,  through the story of the betrothal of a fictional Acadian girl named Evangeline Bellefontaine to her beloved, Gabriel Lajeunesse.  Evangeline and Gabriel are separated during the expulsion.  The poem follows Evangeline’s years long search for her Gabriel.  As an old woman she settles in Philadelphia tending to the ill and dying.   She finds Gabriel who is gravely ill and he dies in her arms.

(Note: This book has yet to be published.)