Mule Twain

Painting


2015 (Date manufactured/created)
Painting
Paint, Canvas, Wood
Mule Twain, 2015, oil on canvas painting by Eileen Lonsway Moore.
Painting features a "portrait" of Mark Twain as a white mule in a white suit and multicolored tie. The mule is surrounded by four scenes, one in each corner, from Mark Twain's books and life. A steamboat is in the upper proper right, Huck Finn standing with a pole under a tree is in the upper proper left. Huck Finn with Jim on the raft is in the lower proper right. And Tom Sawyer sitting under a tree is in the lower proper left. Above Sawyer's tree near the mule's left shoulder are three books, one blue, one red, and one green. The green has visible spine text reading "Tom Sawyer". The artist signed the painting "EilEEn" in white paint at the base of Sawyer's tree in the lower proper left.Clemens’s likeness has been interpreted in many forms. Eileen Lonsway Moore, the artist of “Mule Twain,” has painted over 24 portraits, from “Elvis to Willy (Nelson) Mule, Gone with the Mules, etc.” Several of her works are on display in the Old Curiosity Bookstore in Columbia, Tennessee, which calls itself “the mule capitol of the world.”
 
The Mark Twain House & Museum, Gift of Eileen Lonsway Moore, 2016
2016.7.1