Newell Convers Wyeth (
October 22,
1882 –
October 19,
1945), known as
N.C. Wyeth, was an American
artist and
illustrator. He was the star pupil of artist
Howard Pyle and became one of America's
greatest illustrators.
During his lifetime, Wyeth created over 3,000 paintings and
illustrated 112 books, 25 of them for
Scribner's, which is the work
for which he is best-known.
Wyeth was a
realist painter
just as the camera and photography began to compete with his craft.
Sometimes seen as melodramatic, his illustrations were designed to
be understood quickly. Wyeth, who was both a painter and an
illustrator, understood the difference, and said in 1908, "Painting
and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the
other."
Life
Wyeth in his studio,
c.
N.C.
Wyeth
was born in Needham, Massachusetts
. His ancestor, Nicholas Wyeth, a stonemason,
came to Massachusetts from England in 1645. Later ancestors were
prominent participants in the French and Indian Wars, the
Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War,
passing down rich oral histories and tradition to N.C. Wyeth and
his family and providing subject matter for his art, which was
deeply felt. His maternal ancestors came from Switzerland, and as a
child, his mother was acquainted with literary giants
Henry David Thoreau and
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His
literary appreciation and artistic talents appear to have come from
her.
He was the oldest of four brothers who spent much time hunting,
fishing, and enjoying other outdoor pursuits, and doing chores on
their farm. His varied youthful activities and his naturally astute
sense of observation later aided the authenticity of his
illustrations and obviated the need for models: "When I paint a
figure on horseback, a man plowing, or a woman buffeted by the
wind, I have an acute sense of the muscle strain."
His mother encouraged his early inclination toward art. Wyeth was
doing excellent watercolor paintings by the age of twelve. He went
to Mechanics Arts School to learn drafting, and then the
Massachusetts Normal Arts School and the Eric Pape School of Art to
learn illustration, under
George
Loftus Noyes and Charles W. Reed.
When two
of his friends were accepted to Howard Pyle's School of Art in
Wilmington,
Delaware
and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
, Wyeth was invited to try to join them in
1902. Howard Pyle was the
"father" of American illustration, and Wyeth immediately meshed
with his methods and ideals. Pyle’s approach included excursions to
historical sites and impromptu dramas using props and costumes,
meant to stimulate imagination, emotion, atmosphere, and the
observation of humans in action—all necessities for his style of
illustration. Pyle stressed historical accuracy and tinged it with
a romantic aura. But where Pyle painted in exquisite detail, Wyeth
veered toward looser, quicker strokes and relied on ominous shadows
and moody backgrounds. He probably picked up his glazing technique
from Pyle.
Wyeth’s exuberant personality and talent made him a standout
student. A robust, powerfully built young man with strangely
delicate hands, he ate a lot less than his size implied. He was
admiring of great literature, music, and drama, and he enjoyed
spirited conversation.
A bucking bronco for the cover of
The Saturday Evening Post on
February 21,
1903
was Wyeth's first commission as an illustrator. That year he
described his work as "true, solid American subjects–nothing
foreign about them."
It was a spectacular accomplishment for the 21-year-old Wyeth,
after just a few months under Pyle’s tutelage. In 1904, the same
magazine commissioned him to illustrate a Western story, and Pyle
urged Wyeth to go West to acquire direct knowledge, much as
Zane Grey had done for his Western novels.
In Colorado, he worked as a cowboy alongside the professional
"punchers," moving cattle and doing ranch chores. He visited the
Navajo in Arizona and gained an
understanding of Native American culture. When his money was
stolen, he worked as a mail carrier on horseback to gain back
needed funds. He wrote home, "The life is wonderful, strange—the
fascination of it clutches me like some unseen animal—it seems to
whisper, 'Come back, you belong here, this is your real home.'
"
On a second trip two years later, he collected information on
mining and brought home costumes and artifacts, including cowboy
and Indian clothing. His early trips to the western United States
inspired a period of images of
cowboys and
Native
Americans that dramatized the
Old
West. His depictions of Native Americans tended to be
sympathetic, showing them in harmony with their environment, as
demonstrated by
In the Crystal Depths (1906).
Upon returning to Chadds Ford, he painted a series of farm scenes
for
Scribner's,
finding the landscape less dramatic than that of the West but
nonetheless a rich environment for his art: “Everything lies in its
subtleties, everything is so gentle and simple, so unaffected.” His
painting
Mowing (1907), not done for illustration, was
among the most successful images of rural life, rivaling
Winslow Homer's great scenes of
Americana.
He married Carolyn Bockius of Wilmington and settled in Chadds Ford
in 1908 to raise a family on near the historic Brandywine
battlefield. By now, he had left Pyle, and commissions were coming
in quickly. His hope had been that he would make enough money with
his illustrations to be able to afford the luxury of painting what
he wanted; but as his family and income grew, he found it difficult
to break from illustration.
N.C. Wyeth created a stimulating household for his talented
children
Andrew Wyeth,
Henriette Wyeth Hurd,
Carolyn Wyeth,
Ann
Wyeth McCoy, and
Nathaniel C. Wyeth. Wyeth was very sociable,
and frequent visitors included
F. Scott
Fitzgerald,
Joseph
Hergesheimer,
Hugh Walpole,
Lillian Gish, and
John Gilbert. According to Andrew, who spent
the most time with his father on account of his sickly childhood,
N.C. was a strict but patient father who did not talk down to his
children. His hard work as an illustrator gave his family the
financial freedom to follow their own artistic and scientific
pursuits. Andrew went on to become one of the foremost American
artists of the second half of the 20th century, and both Henriette
and Carolyn became artists also; Ann became an artist and composer.
Nathaniel became an engineer for
DuPont and
worked on the team that invented the plastic soda bottle. Henriette
and Ann married two of N.C.'s protégés,
Peter
Hurd and
John W. McCoy. N.C. Wyeth is the grandfather of artist
Jamie Wyeth and musician
Howard Wyeth.
Title page,
King
Arthur.
By 1911, N.C. Wyeth began to move away from Western subjects and on
to illustrating classic literature. He painted a series for an
edition of
Treasure Island
(1911), by
Robert Louis
Stevenson, thought by many to be his finest group of
illustrations. The proceeds from this great success paid for his
house and studio. He also illustrated editions of
Kidnapped (1913),
Robin Hood (1917),
The Last of the Mohicans
(1919),
Robinson Crusoe
(1920),
Rip Van Winkle
(1921),
The White Company
(1922), and
The Yearling
(1939). He did work for prominent periodicals, including
Century,
Harper's Monthly,
Ladies' Home Journal,
McClure's,
Outing,
The
Popular Magazine, and
Scribner's. His early works were
sold outright at a handsome price, but only much later did he
receive royalties. Wyeth would read a book thoroughly before doing
the contracted illustrations, and he specifically created scenes
that were thinly described in the book, adding details and mood of
his own, as in
Old Pew (1911).
By 1914, Wyeth loathed the commercialism upon which he became
dependent, and for the rest of his life, he battled internally over
his capitulation, accusing himself of having “bitched myself with
the accursed success in skin-deep pictures and illustrations.” He
complained of money men "who want to buy me piecemeal" and that "an
illustration must be made practical, not only in its dramatic
statement, but it must be a thing that will adapt itself to the
engravers' and printers' limitations. This fact alone kills that
underlying inspiration to create thought. Instead of expressing
that inner feeling, you express the outward thought… or imitation
of that feeling."
Wyeth also
did posters, calendars, and advertisements for clients such as
Lucky Strike, Cream of Wheat, and Coca-Cola, as well as paintings of Beethoven,
Wagner, and Liszt for Steinway & Sons
. He painted murals of historical and
allegorical subjects for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the
Westtown School, the First National Bank of Boston, the Hotel
Roosevelt, the Franklin Savings Bank, the National Geographic
Society, and other public and private buildings. During both World
Wars, he contributed patriotic images to government and private
agencies.
His nonillustrative portrait and landscape paintings changed
dramatically in style throughout his life as he experimented first
with impressionism in the 1910s (feeling an affinity with the
nearby "New Hope Group"), then by the 1930s veering to the
realistic American regionalism of
Thomas Hart Benton and
Grant Wood, painting with thin oils and
occasionally, egg tempera. Wyeth worked rapidly and experimented
constantly, often working on a larger scale than necessary,
befitting his energetic and grand vision, which often harked back
to his ancestral past. He could conceive, sketch out, and paint a
large painting in as little as three hours.
By the
1930s, he restored an old captain’s house in Port Clyde,
Maine
, named "Eight Bells" after a Winslow Homer
painting, and took his family there for summers, where he painted
primarily seascapes. Museums started to purchase his
paintings, and by 1941, he was elected to the National Academy and
exhibited on a regular basis.
In 1945, N.C. Wyeth and his grandson (Nathaniel C. Wyeth's son)
died in an accident at a railway crossing near his Chadds Ford
home.
At the time of his death, Wyeth was working on an ambitious series
of murals for the
Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company depicting the Pilgrims at Plymouth, a series completed
by Andrew Wyeth and John McCoy.
In June
1945, he received the honorary degree of master of arts from
Bowdoin
College
. N.C.
Wyeth was a member of the National Academy,
the Society of Illustrators, the Philadelphia Water Color Club, the
Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts
, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Chester County
Art Association, and the Wilmington Society of the
Fine Arts.
Significant public collections of Wyeth's
work are on display at the Brandywine River Museum
in Chadds Ford, and in Maine, at the Portland Museum
of Art
and the Farnsworth Art Museum
in Rockland
. The Brandywine River Museum offers tours of
the
N.C. Wyeth House and Studio in Chadds
Ford. The home and studio were designated as a
National Historic Landmark in
1997.
Other works
- Mowing (1907)
- Long John Silver and Hawkins (1911)
- The Great Train Robbery (1912)
- The Fence Builders (1915)
- The Scottish Chiefs (1921) by Jane Porter also know as Braveheart
- The Giant (1923)
- Apotheosis of the Family (1932): a
60-foot-by-19-foot mural including likenesses of members of the Wyeth
family, located in a building in downtown Wilmington,
Delaware
- Dying Winter (1934)
- The Alchemist (1938)
- Deep Cover Lobsterman (1939)
- The War Letter (1944)
- Nightfall (1945)
- Stand and Deliver (19??)
See also
Notes
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