An original pen, ink and wash drawing of Don Quixote by Gustave Dore,
perhaps the most famous illustrator of all time. In America, certainly
Norman Rockwell is better known, but in the world, it is Dore.

Not only is this a 150 year-old original
done in a technique rarely used by Dore,
it is the only copy of this image in the world.
The wizard is attempting to buy it.
(Good luck, Wizzo. You’re gonna need it.)

 Wearing the unmistakeable Helmet of Mambrino, 
Quixote wanders the countryside, looking a little – to me – like
Johnny Appleseed, that iconic American gardener of Westward Expansion.

Did you know Johnny Appleseed was a real guy? 
His real name was Johnny Chapman.

This Quixote also seems to have a sort of Bruce Chatwin 
quality about him; Bruce, that poetic wanderer… 
 

“Nomadism is born of wide expanses, ground too barren for the farmer to cultivate economically – savannah, steppe, desert and tundra, all of which will support an animal population providing that it moves. For the nomad, movement is morality. Without movement, his animals would die. Nomads never roam aimlessly from place to place, as one dictionary would have it. A nomadic migration is a guided tour of animals around a predictable sequence of pastures… For life in the black tents has not significantly changed since Abraham, the Bedouin sheikh, moved his flock on his ‘journeys from the south even unto Bethel, where his tent had been at the beginning.'” (Genesis 13:3)
– Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here? p.219 – 220 (1988)
 

“‘Sherpa’ means ‘Easterner’ in Tibetan; and the Sherpas who settled in Khambu about 450 years ago are a peace-loving Buddhist people from the Eastern shore of the plateau. They are also compulsive travelers; and in Sherpa-country every track is marked with cairns and prayer-flags, reminding you that Man’s real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.”
– Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here? p.273, (1988)
 

“The word ‘story’ is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.”
– Bruce Chatwin, introduction to What Am I Doing Here? (1988)