So alive is Rip in art and literature since his creation by Washington Irving in 1821 that even today some are still surprised to learn that the sleepy Dutchman is more myth than man. That's because many of America's finest writers, artists, and illustrators have done their best to keep him alive, in our imaginations and in our hearts.

As a symbol of America, Rip goes to sleep henpecked by Europe, who doubles for Dame Van Winkle in Irving's humorous story. He awakens, however, minus Mrs. Winkle, whom we're told has died a convenient death, to a new world of bright promise and dark premonitions. Perhaps it was of intimations of Little Big Horn, the extinction of the buffalo and the disappearance of the wilderness that Rip dreamed during his long, murky sleep. Irving himself remains silent on the question.

But is this the way other artists and writers have envisioned Rip since his creation more than a hundred and seventy years ago?

In 1838, Asher Durand, an artist of the Hudson River School, worked on a painting entitled Rip Van Winkle's Introduction to the crew of Hendrick Hudson, in the Catskill Mountains for his patron Ogden Haggerty. Unlike Irving's mythic legend, Durand's painting has been lost to time. A single entry in the notebook of fellow artist Thomas Cole is all that remains of it today. The image itself has been left by time to our imaginations.

Not so in the case of many other notable American authors, artists and illustrators, all of whom were fascinated with the figure of Rip; the most notable among them are Herman Melville, John Rogers, Joseph Jefferson, Arthur Rackham and N.C. Wyeth.

In 1890, just a year before his death as an embittered, unsung genius of nineteenth century letters, Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, put together a loosely-thematic collection of poems, "Weeds and Wildings," among them a curious prose essay-cum-poem entitled "Rip Van Winkle's Lilac."

"Lilac" is Melville's apology for the artist. In it, he seeks to justify Rip's lazy ways to Man. To many readers of Irving's classic story, Rip's genial disregard for hard work and his careless, gone-fishing attitude mark him as a child in the world, but in Melville's mind they also mark Rip as a prototype of the artist.

It's the artist in Rip that Melville celebrates in his poem, for it's the appearance of the lilac, which we're told Rip himself planted long ago, that finally endows his hometown with a beauty and enchantment that blossoms "Like that first Paradise embowered."

Today, thanks to "poor-good-for-nothing Rip," Palenville, Greene County is still remembered as the sleepy Dutchman's fictional hometown, a fact that Irving neither confirmed nor denied in his lifetime but which he met with a knowing wink every time he was asked the question. Interestingly, Palenville was the seat of one of the country's earliest art colonies and a favorite haunt of Thomas Cole and other leading painters of the Hudson River School, some of whom stayed at country homes and inns in the hamlet while visiting the area.

Art transforms: Is that what Irving -- and Rip -- is trying to tell us?

Almost twenty years earlier than Melville's poem, sculptor John Rogers, whose prized creations adorned thousands of ordinary mantelpieces in America, found inspiration in the figure of Rip. Dubbed 'the artist of the Common People," Rogers low-priced plaster and artificial stone sculptures made art affordable to the middle-classes. Many of Rogers' sculptures drew their inspiration from literature. So it's no wonder that in the summer of 1869, after having attended a performance of Joseph Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle," Rogers was himself inspired to create what would eventually become one of his most popular sculptures, "Rip Van Winkle at Home." Price, $12!

In 1871 one of Rogers admiring critics wrote of "Rip at Home" that it would be "prized as a memorial of a charming bit of American Literature, and of the most delightful actor in the American drama," for Rogers had modeled his portrait of Rip on one of America's most popular actors.

Two other "Rip" sculptures followed. "Rip Van Winkle on the Mountain," depicts Joseph Jefferson as Rip and a young member of Jefferson's company, William Seymour, as a pestering gnome. "Rip Van Winkle Returned," the rarest today, was the last of Roger's illustrations of Joseph Jefferson in his most famous role. It depicts a harried Rip, dazed in wonderment. As with the first, these two sculptures retailed at $12 each. Offered as a set, they could also be purchased individually. All three remained in Roger's stock until the end of his career in 1891.

Rogers explained his fascination with Rip's character this way: "I went to see Jefferson in Rip v. Winkle last night and I had a awfully sympathetic feeling come over me when the poor fellow bemoaned his fate while away from his wife & children..."

It's no wonder that Rogers felt sympathy for the lonely Dutchman since the sculptor himself was a devoted family man.

"Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!"

To actor Joseph Jefferson, there was magic in the sound of the name as he heard it repeated each night on the stage.

"An American story by an American author" was how he described Irving's masterpiece after having performed it for over thirty years to packed houses. Never mind that Irving had used as the major source for his "American story" a little known German folktale about a goat-herder, Peter Klaus, who falls asleep in the Kyfhauser mountains, only to awaken, gray-bearded, twenty years later to find his fowling-piece rusted and his dog gone.

"Surely a just theme suited to an American actor," was another of Jefferson's frequent -- and ironic, considering the tale's Germanic origins -- comments.

The idea of acting Rip came to him in the summer of 1859. "I had arranged to board with my family at a queer old Dutch farm-house in Paradise Valley, at the foot of Pocono Mountain in Pennsylvania. A Ridge of hills covered with tall hemlocks surrounds the vale, and numerous trout-streams wind through the meadows and tumble over rocks. Stray farms are scattered through the valley, and the few old Dutchmen and their families who till the soil were born upon it; there and only there they have ever lived. The scene was wild, the air was fresh, and the board was cheap. What could the light heart and purse of a poor actor ask for more than this?"

Jefferson, too, had been touched by mountain fever. And by the fey spirit of the fairy known as Rip. For over three decades, he would delight American audiences with his kindly rendition of the dreamy Dutchman.

Two American artist-illustrators who've done their fair share to keep Rip's image alive in the twentieth century are Arthur Rackham and N. C. Wyeth.

In 1905, Rackham illustrated Irving's tale for William Heineman, London; the American edition was released the same year by Doubleday, Page & Co. of New York. The year before, British gallery owners Ernest Brown and Phillips, purchased 50 color illustrations of Rip Van Winkle, which they had commissioned from the artist for 300 guineas. The originals were exhibited in their Leicester Galleries in March 1905 and by year's end they had all been sold. The publishing rights, which Brown and Phillips also owned, were simultaneously sold to the publishing firm of William Heinemann. The illustrations for this now sought-after work were all gathered together at the back of the book and printed on glossy paper and attached on to a thicker backing because the printing technology of the time made it impossible to print in color on a book's thin text pages. There was a decidedly German feeling behind Rackham's "Rip," an evocation that critics did not let go unnoticed in their comparisons of the British illustrator's work with that of Durer. Rackham's portrayal of Rip was different than that of Rogers or Jefferson, who had seen in Irving's character much sweetness and light. In contrast, the gnarled hands of Rackham's Rip cast ominous shadows on the wall as he recounts the story of his long sleep to a few of the neighborhood children. These shadows, which convey anguish and pain or the threat of it, can be said to represent the darker side of Rackham's -- and, by implication, Irving's -- imagination -- rooted as they are in childhood. Rackham, the artist, knows what Rip, the child-artist, does not know; that there's sometimes a high price to pay for a spirited imagination. In the end, it could be said that Rip Van Winkle, this most American of books, helped popularize Rackham's career in America for after its appearance all his important books sold well in America.

N.C. Wyeth's Rip Van Winkle, on the other hand, is a more kindly figure than Rackham's. True, his eyes reveal that his has gone through an unexplained transformation but the shadows in Wyeth's illustration of the older Rip belong to the dusty corners of time and not the cluttered attic of the mind. Published by David McKay in 1921, the book contained 11 handsome illustrations. Wyeth, who rarely worked in pen and ink, nonetheless employed the pen in his drawings for Rip. Wyeth's son, Andrew, found "great quality" in those pencil drawings but, according to the son, himself an accomplished artist, the father did not. The elder Wyeth's self-criticism non-withstanding, this American classic as illustrated by him is still a collector's treasure.

Will America's marathon sleeper make it into the twenty-first century?

Only time will tell.

Carolyn Bennett is the curator of the Zadock Pratt Museum in the Catskill Mountains region, where she resides. An adjunct professor in the humanities at Columbia-Greene Community College and a trustee of the Greene County Historical Society, she is the author of two poetry collections, a collection of short stories, and writes frequently about the literary lore of the Catskills.