N.C. Wyeth: A Dynasty

"Christina's World" by Andrew Wyeth

"Carol Bockius Wyeth, N.C. Wyeth's wife, often said that she wished her life had ended with her husband's. In some ways, it did. She never learned to drive. She remained in her house with her linens and drying corsages and a growing collection of blond curls taken from the unshorn heads of Wyeth grandchildren. Yet 'unlike other grandmothers, her grandchildren never entirely engrossed her,' Henriette wrote. 'Mummy's life and excitements were all in and around Pa.' At the urging of her children, Carol left everything in the Homestead and the studio as it was. Everything became a relic. 

Life itself would go on. Twenty-five years passed. Yet the Homestead and the studio remained exactly as they had been on October 19, 1945. Scarcely visited by outsiders, overgrown, Rocky Hill became N.C. Wyeth's shrine. Even his place in 'The Robe,' the book he was reading the night before the collision, stayed marked at page 176. Carol died of a heart attack on March 15, 1973, a week before her eighty-seventh birthday.

As time went on, as three generations of Wyeth painters succeeded N.C., the Wyeths would remain in the public eye as a group. Treated in the national press as a ruling family, the Wyeths were always approachable in their villages; open, engaging, modest - ordinary people listed in the telephone directory.

Of home there was no letting go. One by one they would come to be buried beside Pa under the grave marker he had designed. As in Needham, a single stone marked the lives and deaths of the Wyeths, their individual birth years, initials, and terminal dates carved one below the next, the family reunited under one rock."

Wyeth Family of Artists: https://www.brandywine.org/museum/about/wyeth-family-artists

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.)

N.C. Wyeth: Afterwards

"Winter 1946" by Andrew Wyeth

"Andy Wyeth returned again and again to the railroad crossing in the winter of 1946. The site of his father's death was surrounded by people and places he had known all his life and yet, until that winter, had never seen. Transformed by shock, he saw the familiar world of the crossing with new eyes. One day that winter Andy caught a glimpse of a neighbor's son running, nearly out of control, down the massive slope of Kuerner's Hill. It was Allan Lynch, the boy who had stood by his father's body to keep dogs away. Andy painted Allan as his surrogate, traumatized, disoriented, lost on the hill.

The pivotal point in Andrew Wyeth's life and art, 'Winter 1946' was a projection of the world of his future work. From that point on in portrait and landscape, Andy painted things as they were now, seen through the lens of N.C.'s absence. 'His death was the thing that really brought me to life,' said Andy, later adding, 'It gave me a reason to paint, an emotional reason. I think it made me.'

From 1971 Andrew Wyeth painted and drew a collection of work that recorded, among other things, the painter's involvement with his model, Helga Testorf, a homesick, German-born nurse who lived with her husband and children near the crossing where N.C. was killed. For the next fifteen years Andy withheld from his wife Betsy not only the fact of his relationship with Helga, but the work itself - 240 portraits, figure studies, and landscapes, including some of the best painting he would ever accomplish. 

Somehow Andy and Betsy's marriage survived. They continued to winter in Chadds Ford and summer in Maine. Year after year, as the list of Andrew's honors and prizes lengthened, as the sale of his temperas brought in millions, Andy became increasingly driven to preserve the legacy of the artist who had made it possible for him to paint. 

Betsy Wyeth became the authority on N.C. Wyeth. As the editor of his correspondence, she single-handedly established the foundation on which all future examination of the artist's life and work was built. Betsy had known N.C. only six years. In the decade immediately following his death, as she came to understand the breadth of his talent, her youthful resistance to her father-in-law broke down. After collecting his paintings and editing his letters, after studying his work and documenting on film his influence on Andrew, she would come to love N.C. without criticism. She would recognize that all along she herself had wanted his love and acceptance."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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N.C. Wyeth: Tragedy Strikes

"Winter Death" by N.C. Wyeth

"The Octoraro Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad intersected Ring Road at a grade crossing one mile from the village of Chadds Ford, less than a mile from the Wyeth Homestead. A small oval crossing sign, rusted but bearing the old warning, STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN, stood as the safety signal alongside the tracks.

The rural road approached the rail crossing at an odd, forty-degree angle. Just before reaching the railroad embankment, the road also made two rises, mounting one last incline before crossing the tracks. On the side from which N.C. was approaching, trees grew thick and close along the embankment. The only way to have a clear view down the tracks was to hurl the station wagon onto them and then lean forward over the wheel.

Breasting the crossing that morning, N.C.'s car came suddenly to a halt. A train was approaching from the city. As soon as the engineer saw the station wagon on the tracks, he slammed on the air brakes. He sounded his whistle and bell, but the car did not move, and no one got out of it. The engineer knew that it was too late to stop. 

The collision occurred at seventeen minutes past nine. The train crushed the driver's side of the station wagon, then dragged the car 143 feet down the rails, before tossing the heap against a signal control and derailing itself. Miraculously, none of the train crew was injured. For the Wyeths, the calamity was total. Both N.C.  and his grandson were killed. Little Newell was a month shy of his fourth birthday. N.C. would have been sixty-three on Monday. The date was Friday, October 19th.

In Chadds Ford two coffins, one massive, one child size, lay open at Birmingham Friends Meetinghouse. On Sunday afternoon, October 21, the family gathered at three o'clock for the funeral service. It was a spectacular day in the valley, brilliant with light and color. The pews were jammed. Survived by all his brothers, all his children, by Carol, by his old colleagues in illustration at the Howard Pyle School - Ashley, Aylward, Chase, Dunn, Peck, Schoonover - N.C. seemed to have died much too soon. With Newell alongside him, and the valley all around, he was buried in the graveyard behind the meetinghouse."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.)

N.C. Wyeth: Fine Artist

"Island Funeral" by N.C. Wyeth

"Andy Wyeth was now the family's undisputed star. Henriette had recently had her first solo show in New York. Carolyn had gone on edging out the Pyles for prizes in Wilmington, and Ann was composing for main line orchestras. As 'the daddy of them all,' N.C. was asked, 'Aren't you proud of it all?' Tossing his head, he would answer with a laugh. 'Of course I am!' The unfolding of all the younger members of the family is a glorious episode of my life.' For himself though, he still maintained a 'clear vision of what lies ahead before a real mark is achieved.'

On December 4, 1939, the whole family, except Nat and Caroline and Peter Hurd, returned to Macbeth's gallery for what N.C. termed 'my first appearance in N.Y. as a painter of something other than illustrations.' At the gallery the family gathered for a press portrait. Andy was late - without telling anyone he had been shopping for an engagement ring, but they made a crowded, Sunday-best picture for 'Newsweek.' On the wall behind them, 'Island Funeral' hung in the dominant spot opposite the door. 

Peter Hurd had written the introduction for the exhibition catalog, announcing the twelve oil and tempera landscapes and seascapes as the moment of N.C. Wyeth's liberation from the art of illustration. Some 300 guests appeared, jamming the room all afternoon. The author of 'Howard Pyle,' Marjorie Rawlings, presented her collaborator with a 'huge and violent bouquet with every known flower it.' Blushing furiously, N.C. was surprised that the world could be this good to him. He was on the point of tears. Ann Wyeth later remembered it as a characteristic moment for her father.

Two paintings sold. 'Fox in the Snow' went for $750.  But on the sale of 'Sun Glint,' N.C. sacrificed $300 so that an impecunious buyer could afford to buy an Andrew Wyeth watercolor at the same time. All told he had posted expenses of $1,390.53 and gallery commissions of $337.50, for a loss of $528.14. Within hours of returning to Chadds Ford, the 'inevitable reaction set in and I've felt pretty low ever since,' he told a friend. He knew he 'ought to be encouraged and reasonably happy,' but he only felt frustrated now that he could see 'with cruelly clear eyes' how short he had fallen, and 'how little time there seems to be left in which to make up the distance.'

Soon afterwards a telegram from the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., announced that N.C.'s 'In a Dream I Meet General Washington' had won a fourth prize, accompanied by $500 and a Corcoran Honorable Mention certificate. He had won prizes before, first prizes and gold medals, but always as an illustrator. Each time he had shrugged them off. To be honored as a painter, even in fourth place, was something else again. He had spent that morning in a wash of tears of happiness."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.)

N.C. Wyeth: Andrew Launches

"Charlie Ervine," 1937 by Andrew Wyeth

"In October 1932, at the age of fifteen, Andy entered his father's studio on Rocky Hill to begin his apprenticeship. He would have as his teacher a father who meant for his son to be the better craftsman. 'If you're not better than I am,' N.C. would tell Andy, 'I'm a rotten teacher.' He was the only teacher Andrew Wyeth would ever have.

Less than five years later, in early January 1936, Andy took examples of his work - twenty watercolors and two black-and-white drawings - to New York City. On his father's advice he left the portfolio at the Macbeth Gallery at 11 East Fifty-Seventh Street and went home. A response came quickly. Robert Macbeth, president of the gallery, believed that Andrew Wyeth had 'something quite new to offer.' He proposed to give Andy his first solo show later that year.

That summer N.C. reported to Macbeth, 'The boy is really aflame! A parent cannot, I suppose, judge dispassionately of his children, but I believe very deeply that Andy is headed toward splendid accomplishments.' With Andy he had been an altogether different teacher than he had for the older children. From the boy's first studies in perspective, through cast drawing and still-life painting and finally figure study and landscape in oil, N.C. had done everything he could to make himself invisible. He rarely altered Andy's work, as Pyle had done to young Wyeth and as N.C. had done to Henriette and Carolyn. Instead of drawing directly on Andy's pictures, he would make a sketch on Andy's paper - to demonstrate possibilities.

By the end of September 1937, Andy had forty-eight watercolors to send to his first New York exhibition. When the show opened in October, the family gather in excitement, little expecting what twenty-year-old Andrew Wyeth was about to do. By the morning of the second day, word had spread. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney had bought 'The Lobster Trap.' Individual collectors had bought three and four paintings at a go, and art dealers from all along the eastern seaboard were snapping up what was left. 

Doll & Richards, the Boston gallery that had given Winslow Homer his first one-man show of watercolors, booked Andy for the fall of 1938. When he reappeared in the gallery, on his way home to Chadds Ford that second afternoon, a red foil star gleamed on every frame: a complete sellout, a record for the gallery! N.C. himself was speechless when he heard the news. Stepping forward, he took his son in his arms and hugged him. The next day Andrew Wyeth went back to work in his father's studio, studying anatomy."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.)

N.C. Wyeth: His Children's Teacher

"Self-Portrait," ca. 1914 by N.C. Wyeth

"N.C. Wyeth was determined to give his children the structured art training that he felt he had missed. 'I don't care what you do in the future,' he told them, 'but I want you to know fundamentals.' Another time he said, 'I want you to learn to draw so that when you want to express yourself, you won't fumble.'

The studio on the hill became their schoolroom as one child after another took up formal academic training under their father. Henriette had begun to use charcoal at age eleven, studying perspective and applying it to the basic solid shapes: sphere, cube, cone, pyramid. In 1925 Carolyn, age sixteen, followed suit. Hours were disciplined and regular. Charcoal blackened the children's fingers for months at a time. Their signed and dated drawings filled file cabinets.

Under their father they learned how to be literal and romantic at the same time. 'Never paint the material of the sleeve,' he instructed. 'Become the arm!' He taught them how to feel emotion for things and to enter into the essence of an object. He taught them to empathize with an object 'for its own sake, not because it is picturesque, or odd, or striking, but simply because it is an object of form and substance revealed by the wonder of light...'

To all of them N.C. was a 'mentor in general awareness.' He urged his children to know the world. He might suddenly lead them outdoors to examine a tree or the light in a field. Back inside he would fling open William Rimmer's 'Anatomy' to clarify a point and then use the works of Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Constable or Segantini to show that in all great art there is a vast store of technical knowledge from the world itself. 'A thing done right,' he told them, 'is done with the authority of knowledge.'

Time moved on. Now with Henriette winning student prizes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with Carolyn drawing under her father's eye, with Nat a day boy at Swarthmore Preparatory School and Ann taking private instruction in piano, Andy drifted along the outskirts of the family. Still too young for formal training under his father, he looked at his N.C.'s work, and he drew - and drew.

First it was English grenadiers and pirates that filled his drawing pad, then crusaders in armor. He played with a collection lead soldiers and made drawings of doughboys going over the top. His drawing was fluid, wild. N.C. envied Andy's carefree hands, his wide-eyed gaze. 'How wonderful it is,' the father marveled, 'to do things with no traditions or sophistications of the past to bother one!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.)

N.C. Wyeth: The Teacher and His Students

"Dark Harbor Fishermen" by N.C. Wyeth

"N.C. Wyeth began teaching in 1915. He took four young men into his studio from as far off as Denver and Ohio. He gave one composition lecture a week, followed by a sketch class on Saturday afternoons and a Thoreau reading Sunday night. Influenced by his apprenticeship with Pyle, he preferred the natural selection of a shared studio to the politics of academy exhibitions and juried competitions.

"Modeling himself on Pyle, he formed a partnership with the best of his students,called them associates, and made available to them his contacts at Scribners. Within months Dwight Howland was appearing in the magazine and Clark Fay had a book deal. Like Pyle, Wyeth made his students feel that their commitment to painting had mystical significance.

For Wyeth teaching was a revival. Students, he discovered, to his great joy, supplied the kind of emotional intensity he had been looking for in his brothers. Pitt Fitzgerald, a sensitive twenty-two-year-old who had studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, gave back passion to match his own. Five-feet-ten, slender, with a sweet smile, Fitzgerald became engaged to Carol's sister Ruth. It was the first in a long line of Wyeth students who would deepen the attachment to teacher by proposing to the women in his family.

Sadly after serving in WWI at Chateau-Thierry and the Argonne, Fitzgerald had returned in 1918 with shell shock. The memories were intolerable. Unable to function, he broke his engagement to Ruth and had a complete mental collapse, withdrawing to a sanatorium. Wyeth did not - could not - understand. He took it personally. He had counted on Fitzgerald, and now this incident had 'broken his whole faith in young men.' Vowing never to take another student into his studio, he wrote, 'I do wonder why I've been singled out to suffer so with young fellows whom I have tried, deeply, to help so much.'"

"However, in 1923 Peter Hurd arrived in Chadds Ford, with a click of his heels and a salute. He had recently left West Point after struggling through a personal conflict of interests: the military or painting.  Hurd's respect for the work of N.C. Wyeth, and his own perseverance gave him the opportunity to meet Wyeth at his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The meeting went well, and soon Hurd moved to Chadds Ford, and became a student of the renowned illustrator. Peter Hurd later commented that West Point was tough on its students, but N.C. Wyeth was tougher. For the next ten years, he lived and painted under the strict guidance of his teacher. All of the Wyeths were quite taken by this handsome, energetic young man in cowboy boots and hat, but none so much as N.C.'s eldest daughter, Henriette, who married Peter Hurd in 1929.  

John W. McCoy arrived at Chadds Ford in 1933. He was a quiet, dignified young man from a valley family. The son of a Du Pont executive, McCoy had ambitions as a painter. He had gone to Cornell and painted in Paris. He quit the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to study with N.C. Wyeth. He felt immediately like a member of the family. He and Ann started dating and became engaged and waited two years to marry. He lived and painted in Chadds Ford, and Spruce Head, Maine until his death in 1989. His unique introspective interpretations of the Brandywine Valley and the coast of Maine established him as a top New England painter. McCoy taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1946-1961."

But the finest students of Wyeth would prove to be his own children.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.)  

 

N.C. Wyeth: WWI

American Red Cross Poster by N.C. Wyeth

"In August 1914 the Wyeths spent a week at the Jersey shore. While they were away, war broke out in Europe. Three publishers instantly fell on N.C. Wyeth to cover the war. Special delivery letters began arriving at the rate of one a week. Telegrams followed. No sooner had they appeared at the door than Wyeth whisked them away without comment.

Few Americans in 1914 expected to fight in Europe's war. They felt it was Europe's problem. William Randolph Hearst, who had already furnished images of one 'glorious little war' for the sake of circulation, was once again on the trail of war artists. Hearst offered Wyeth a chance to join two writers covering Cossack regiments in Poland. The job would mean spending the next eighteen months in Eastern Europe, painting 'flying cavalry, glitter of clashing steel, roar of cannon, the cry of victors' at double his current earnings. But Wyeth resisted, sticking to Chadds Ford and his family. 'My responsibilities here are entirely too important and vital to fool with life that way,' he said.

On April 6, 1917, The United States entered the war in Europe. By June every young man Wyeth knew had answered the draft call. As requests for recruiting posters arrived from Washington, he chafed at the disruption in his work, taking time out from 'King Arthur' to do his bit for the U.S. Navy publicity department, a six-by-ten-foot poster of an American Neptune protecting the freedom of the seas. Later that year he painted posters for the Red Cross but didn't like the results. 'I'll be glad,' he confessed, 'when my share of this work is done.'

On July 13 the War Department offered N.C. Wyeth a first lieutenant's commission. With the former newspaper artist Wallace Morgan, he was to report for duty as an official artist at the front. Here was his second chance to witness war in his own time. But at the same time he was disinclined to let Carol and the children live on $1,800 a year, the annual pay of a first lieutenant, especially since two days before she had given birth to another child, a boy - Andrew Newell Wyeth III.

Twice more he was called to go abroad as a war artist: first from General John Joseph Pershing himself,  then from The American Red Cross to sketch refugees and maimed and blinded soldiers. He realized that seeing the Great War would help 'not only to meet the demands in the field of illustration for the coming years, but to get that something into my blood which all vital painters of this generation will have to have.' But again he declined, believing that 'My art vanishes into the merest speck when suffered comparison to the one divine and tangible sensation bequeathed to us: parent to child, child to parent.' 

He never went to Europe, not in war nor in peace. 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.) 

 

 

N.C. Wyeth: Influencing Cinematography

"The Captives" from "The Last of the Mohicans"
by N.C. Wyeth

"One Sunday, N.C. Wyeth looked up from the midday meal to see a preposterously long and elegant town car pulling up outside his door. Inside sat Joseph Hergesheimer, the newly celebrated novelist and friend, who lived nearby. He announced that he had driven movie star Lillian Gish over to say hello. Another time he introduced the Wyeths to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. The Jazz Age had come to Chadds Ford. 

The tempo of the new decade eluded N.C. Everyone was in a hurry. Modern life had a snappy, sassy edge. Architects sent steel towers soaring into the sky, but N.C. remained right where he was, earnest, stern, incorruptible, and permanently sentimental. The aspirations of the last century - solemnity, grandeur in nature - impressed him so much more. 'I love to see things unchanged,' he said.

Pictures, too, were now in motion. The movies fascinated - and alarmed - N.C. He fretted that magazine publishers were 'trying to do the impossible,' expecting the picture on the page to behave like the picture on the screen. But Hollywood was still in debt to painting for pictorial standards, and when the great silent filmmaker Maurice Tourneur, who had been a painter, released 'The Last of the Mohicans' in December 1920, N.C. was flattered to see that Tourneur and his team had 'very obviously followed my pictures with marked fidelity, even to the selection of facial characteristics and certain poses and postures I represented. At times I felt as though some of my pictures had suddenly come to life. The sensation was singular indeed.'

He would not be lured, however. As the 1920s went by, Wyeth refused offers to work in Hollywood, repeatedly turning down Douglas Fairbanks's and Mary Pickford's enticements to direct pirate pictures. In 1926, drawn into one deal as assistant director, Wyeth go so nervous he bolted the room.

Even when talking pictures came in, Wyeth's illustrations went on being models for Hollywood directors. After seeing a private screening of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's production of 'The Yearling,' the author, Marjorie Rawlings, reported that 'they copied exactly several of his 'Yearling' paintings. That is, as exactly as physical 'properties' and human being could copy the greater art of his brush.' Director Clarence Brown said that he had faithfully reproduced in scenes no fewer than eight of Wyeth's fifteen original pictures, 'and they were the highlights of the film.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.)

N.C. Wyeth: Mural Painting

"The Battle of Wilson's Creek" at the Missouri State Capitol

"N.C. Wyeth's painting hand had always craved size. He usually made his illustrations about as large as was feasible for reduction down to the small dimensions of the book or magazine page but still he sometimes felt cramped. Some of his colleagues like George Harding and Stanley Arthurs were working on mural decorations and the challenge of those large spaces excited him. He seized the opportunity to paint a long panel of an Indian hunt for a hotel in Utica, New York. With this experience behind him he moved on to larger projects. One of the most important and successful was the commission to paint two large lunettes for the Missouri State Capitol. These were Civil War subjects and one, which proved most popular, was a handsome battle piece of the fight at Wilson's Creek, painted in soft, vibrant hues of blue, green and muted golden pinks.

As his reputation as a muralist spread and as new commissions came in, even the impressive studio on the hill proved insufficient. He built a long addition to it, separated from the old studio by great doors and accessible by going down a flight of wide steps. It had the advantage of great height and was equipped with ladders, scaffolds and a movable platform. Even his craving for size was satisfied. Climbing ladders and reaching from scaffolds took care of his ambitious muscles. 

Two large commissions came from Boston, one for a set of five upright panels on the theme of maritime commerce for the First National Bank of that city and two decorations for the Federal Reserve Bank. A succession of orders followed: five panels in the new Hubbard Memorial Building of the National Geographic Society in Washington, a large mural in the Federal Savings Bank in New York City, panels in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, New York, the Wilmington Savings Society and the First Mechanics National Bank of Trenton, New Jersey, and a triptych for the Chapel of the Holy Spirit in the National Cathedral in Washington.

He usually rose at dawn and fortified himself with two or three grapefruit halves, a huge pile of hot cakes and four or five eggs. Then up the hill to the studio in the morning light, he would face last night's canvas in the merciless brightness of the new day or prepare to attack a new one on the easel. Often he would put a Beethoven or Sibelius record on the Victrola to get himself off to a good start. After a long day's work at the easel, he would come down the darkening path to the house, stretching his arms saying, 'I wish the day was just starting.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.)

N.C. Wyeth: The Books

"Robin Hood and His Merry Men"
by N.C. Wyeth

"With the publication of 'Treasure Island' in 1911, N.C. Wyeth moved into his harvest years. The pictures marked the beginning of a long series of illustrated classics for Scribner's and other publishers. Almost every year a new book with a fresh set of glowing pictures was added to the list, which included such classics as 'Kidnapped,' 'The Black Arrow,' 'Robin Hood,' 'The Last of the Mohicans,' 'Westward Ho!,' 'The Mysterious Island,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'The Deerslayer,' and 'The Oregon Trail.' 

The format of the books followed a standardized pattern, generally seven inches by nine and a quarter, with a four-color paper jacket, the same picture pasted on the linen binding, a two-color endpaper panel and sometimes chapter headings in line work. The long series of book illustrations gave him scope to exercise his color gifts, and they show gradual experimentation and enlargement of his color vocabulary. His palette, beginning largely in the earth-color range, added much of Pyle's medieval richness and splendor; then, attracted more and more by our American landscape impressionists, his color range was often heightened and ventured into the rainbow spectrum.

Even with the incessant press of work he found the time to roam the hills and the meadows with acquisitive eyes, probing, rejoicing, remembering. But there were images other than those of the Brandywine in his memory - those of the rocks and blue water of the Maine coast near Port Clyde where the Wyeth family spent the summer months. The valley and the Maine coast furnished almost all the material not only for his illustrations but also for his easel paintings.

By the late twenties and the thirties his easel pictures were being widely shown and greatly admired, but there were always the critics who used the word 'illustrator' as a denigrating label. He resented the implied barrier between illustration and painting but his life was too filled with projects to enter into controversy. Both the illustrator and painter, he believed, were artists engaged in pictorial communication. He could see that the illustrative, the narrative element had emerged strongly in the work of master after master, from Giotto to Rubens to Delacroix. Both illustrator and artist, he believed, should be measured by the degree of their talents, not by artificial compartments contrived by critics."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.)

N.C. Wyeth: Models

"The Giant" by N.C. Wyeth

"N.C. Wyeth's children were growing up and at every stage of their growth they figured in their father's pictures. Ann recalls posing dutifully while listening impatiently to young Andy's carefree hi-yipping outside the studio windows. When the pose was finished there was the walk with Father down the road to Gallagher's store and the reward of a bag of chocolate mints. The children also furnished the models for 'The Giant,' a large decoration for the Westtown School in nearby Chester County.

Anyone - family, friends, neighbors - might be pressed into service, for professional models were not available in Chadds Ford. Besides, N.C. Usually painted without models, from his abundant pictorial memory and when he felt the need for model reference it was usually for a brief study only. He was a great improvisor and a few hints from a living presence were all he needed - he could change character and proportions at will. Mrs. Wyeth grasping a long rifle could be converted into an unshaven frontiersman with a few flicks of the brush.

The growing children also gave their father an additional excuse for indulging one of his irrepressible passions - for dressing up, playacting - he loved to change his personality under cover of a strange costume. Over the years, the children were treated to a long succession of Kriss Kringles - there was even one that climbed to the chimney on an icy roof and slipped with almost tragic results. Another time N.C. suddenly appeared before his astonished children festooned with glowing strings of tiny electric light bulbs. The love of the pageantry of Christmas seemed to stem from N.C.'s mother and her Swiss forebears. It has left an ingrained impression on succeeding generations of the family - their impulse to dress up can be ignited very easily!"

 To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.) 

N.C. Wyeth: Family, Home and Studio

"Jim Hawkins Leaves Home"
from "Treasure Island"

"In a few years N.C. and Carolyn were as much a part of Chadds Ford life as if they had lived there all their lives. N.C., with his open nature, quickly made friends. He was genuinely interested in all kinds of people, their peculiarities, their interests, the work of their hands. After he had worked his way through a number of friendly wrestling bouts and thrown all the local champions, there was no question about his acceptance. They could now brag about him, about his ability to hold two filled milk cans at arm's length.

His letters home to his parents and brothers constitute an almost daily chronicle of the Chadds Ford life. There was homely news of Carolyn putting up Mason jars of green beans from the garden and N.C. picking five barrels of apples. Then there was the happy tidings of the firstborn, Henriette, in 1907. In letter after letter her baby ways are lovingly described: 'May 19 - The Butcher was here this morning and he weighed Henriette - 19 1/2 lbs.'

The other children enter the chronicle as they appear: Carolyn - 1909, Nathaniel - 1911, Ann - 1915, and Andrew - 1917. There are descriptions of their new house built on the wooded hillside which looked down across the meadow fields to the hills. Its sturdy brick walls, white trim and a wide veranda was made possible by the Scribner's fee for the illustrations for Stevenson's 'Treasure Island.' Next came an ample studio built above the house on the brow of the hill. 

The large studio room with its high glass Palladian windows to the north and a small anteroom were soon filled with N.C.'s accumulations of props and mementos, costumes, chests, firearms and swords, a birchbark canoe, bookshelves, ship models, busts and bottles. Outside he planted an orchard and a few steps away was an outcropping of large boulders shaded by a tangle of trees which often suggested background elements for some of his adventure settings. It was somewhat remote, yet looked down upon his home and the hills and fields with which he had identified himself."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.)

N.C. Wyeth: At Work

N.C. Wyeth in his studio, 1904

"N.C. Wyeth was never an armchair painter. He was on his feet all the time and moving. He favored large canvases and broad brushes. He needed to back off from his canvas, squint and evaluate, advance and place a deft stroke. Those outside the studio could hear the steady, heavy pacing back and forth. He covered miles in a day. Usually his brush strokes were swung from the shoulder, occasionally for a small, crisp detail he used the steadiness of a mahlstick. He needed room to maneuver and his pictures reflected it.

Many of his illustrations were painted in two or three days, sometimes in one. A small, quick pencil sketch or two usually sufficed to crystalize the important factors of a problem. Then his emotions rose to a peak of creation and his painter's hand worked with resourcefulness and authority. Like all ranking artists he had a brain in his fingers. His drive and facility were the admiration and envy of his colleagues. One of them, Thornton Oakley, said, 'I am in despair over my own work when I see how easily and fluently Convers works on his pictures.'

He was becoming a master manipulator of light and shadow. His years of keen observation of nature's world had amassed a great repertoire of effects, upon which he could draw at will. He was attracting a large audience hungry for his inspirations, and was in the happy position of being offered more work than he could undertake. It was the best of fields for an ambitious, gifted young figurative painter.

He divided his days. In the mornings he made studies in the open fields around Chadds Ford. After lunch he cranked out pictures for 'Scribner's' and 'The Saturday Evening Post,' then returned to the open air in the late afternoon. As the evenings lengthened in May, he remained in the fields and on the riverbanks, sketching, often through supper."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz and "N.C. Wyeth" by David Michaelis.) 

N.C. Wyeth: Marriage

"Tristram and Isolde" by N.C. Wyeth

"Although N.C. Wyeth was still to work with Howard Pyle until he was told he was a graduate, he now had a rising reputation in the publishing world. He was no longer an apprentice, but a well-rounded, practicing illustrator. With a steadily increasing income, he now felt that his father should be reimbursed for the expense of his education. He wrote to him that he hoped to accomplish this during the following year and in passing he confessed a certain extravagance: 'Costumes and material. I have a chest of military costumes that is invaluable to me and is the envy of H.P. himself.'

Pyle and Wyeth had many things in common, yet their natures were divergent. Pyle's emotions worked through layers of Quaker reticence, although a sudden explosion of temper was not impossible. He was the older, of course, by almost thirty years and the grooves of creation were well worn. Wyeth was impetuous and young, impatient with preparation, inclined to the headlong attack. Pyle's was a steadying and helpful influence. The fusion of the scrupulous eye and imagination was their common gift. Wyeth needed a little more time to master this.

In one of his letters to his mother he mentions casually an event that was to bring about a major change in his life. He spoke of plans for a sleighing party and for going to church: 'I met a Miss Bockius the other day and she being a Unitarian asked me to go. I accepted with pleasure.' This casual meeting turned out to be the prelude to love, complete and final. For about a year Wyeth's letters were strangely silent on the subject of Miss Bockius, but the young pair had decided to wait until N.C.'s work had moved ahead another step and the bread-and-butter problem was solved. 

Apparently the solution came shortly after a year, for on the evening of April 16, 1906, Carolyn Bockius and Newell Convers Wyeth were married in the First Unitarian Church of Wilmington. For a short time they remained in town but they had set their heart on the country, and when they found a suitable house to rent they moved out into the Brandywine hills at Chadds Ford."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.)

N.C. Wyeth: Out West

"Bronco Buster" by N.C. Wyeth

"After a few months studying with Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth's period of trial was over. He was now a full-fledged member of the Howard Pyle School of Art and eligible to wear its gold and red button in his lapel. He released him from the ban on professional work and he could go back to painting the images that had been teasing his brain. Commissions were beginning to come in and he was able to send some money back home and save a little.

Like hundreds of other young artists Wyeth couldn't get cowboys and Indians out of his head, but he found himself making pictures of a West he had never seen. Pyle's insistence on firsthand, immersed knowledge had sunk in and Wyeth discovered he couldn't be happy until he had seen the land with his own eyes. He left for a Colorado ranch. He was an excellent horseman and was able to take part in a roundup and the hundred and one chores of cattle raising. The days in the saddle, squinting at new horizons, soaking up the life of the cowhand, filled his retentive pictorial memory with a crowd of images that he would refer to in years to come.

Most of his money was stolen, by in the end it seemed an advantage. He was forced to take employment and when he moved south to a Navajo reservation he paid his way by becoming a mail rider. This made him feel as though he was a participant in the life of the West and his future pictures would ring more true.

When he returned to Wilmington, his head was crammed with impressions, his portfolio filled with drawings. The immediate result was an article for 'Scribner's Magazine' on western sheepherding accompanied by some excellent pictures. These pictures were virile, but subtle, too. Most were painted from the warm earth-color range of the palette. He was now able to project a mood, to use the effects of outdoor light to create electrifying patterns of tone. Pyle had opened his eyes to the mystery of shadows, and his own observations had taught him the dramatic effect of stray shafts of sunlight."

If you'd like to read one of N.C. Wyeth's illustrated articles for Scribner's, here's "A Day with the Round-up": https://centerofthewest.org/2015/11/08/points-west-round-up-impression-by-nc-wyeth/

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.)

N.C. Wyeth: Promising Beginnings

"Bucking Bronco" by N.C. Wyeth

"As N.C. Wyeth moved through his middle and later teens, he attended first the Mechanic Arts High School, then the Massachusetts Normal Art School, and finally the Eric Pape School of Art. That schooling provided a solid foundation for his work with Howard Pyle. He could draw well, not only from the pose model, but also from his imagination and retentive visual memory. His figures had bounce and motion. Crayons, ink, brushes, and pigments were already old friends. He was ready for the enlarging experience of Wilmington and the Pyle group.

He fell naturally into the pattern of long hours of concentrated work, drawing and painting from the model, constructing, imagined heads in a wide range of types and expressions, and putting his best into the compositions to be submitted at the weekly criticism meetings. His first composition was a new England, haying scene, a familiar theme since childhood, and it aroused Pyle's interest and that of the class. He found that the outdoor days of his childhood were an unexpected treasury of memories that he could pillage for countless subjects. Then, too, he was beginning to sense the possibilities in Pyle's passion for the Early American background.

As he was aggressive and had a sharp eye for opportunity, he wanted to experience some contact with the mysterious world of publishing, which would have such a command over his future. He stopped over in New York on the way home for Christmas holidays and carried his portfolio around to a number of publishers. He came from the art editors' offices exhilarated and much more secure about his illustrative ability. They had treated him as a serious professional, and he had a manuscript in his pocket from a magazine prophetically named 'Success'. He had a great deal to tell his family when he finally arrived home.

Shortly after his return to Wilmington, a color sketch of a bronco buster he had submitted to the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia was approved, and he settled down to make a finished painting of his first important commission. A few months later a Wyeth 'Saturday Evening Post' cover was on the newsstands across the country and he was doing his best to conceal his pride in the face of the congratulations of his fellows.

Pyle was both happy and apprehensive for his new student. He probably feared that Wyeth might become overconfident and smug - perhaps the boy was rushing ahead into professionalism before all the foundations were secure. So he prescribed a cessation from all professional effort for a while and suggested that Wyeth concentrate on disciplined drawing from cast and model."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.)

Howard Pyle: N.C. Wyeth

"Chadds Ford Hills" by N.C. Wyeth

"The seeds that Howard Pyle planted were potent with some bearing extraordinary fruit. When he first interviewed twenty-year-old Newell Convers Wyeth before the crackling fireplace logs in his studio, Pyle's immediate instincts told him that here was superior metal. As the boy answered his questions, he grew more certain. He liked what he saw and what he heard.

Young Wyeth came away from that interview walking on air. He had found Pyle to be all that he had expected and more. He was accepted as a student on trial. He kept repeating Pyle's cautionary words over and over to himself, 'My work showed promise and was practical. He emphasized that hard work, constantly applied and the living of a simple life were the two things that would bring about my making.'

He found a studio to share with a fellow student, Philip Hoyt, for a dollar a week. He next found a room for two dollars and board for four. A budget of thirty dollars a month might be stretched to cover everything but clothes and materials.

He fell into his new life gratefully and easily. His new classmates stimulated him, for their high talents were obvious. Here was a new level of attainment to reach for. There was a bracing atmosphere of dedication and work, and he liked the sense of competition. Two of them, Clifford Ashley and Henry Peck, had been his classmates at the Eric Pape School of Art in Boston, and had preceded him into Pyle's school. It was their glowing accounts that had spurred him into making the journey to Wilmington for the interview.

His new friends showed him the roads and path that crisscrossed the country that lay around Wilmington. By tramping them he discovered Chadds Ford and its rounded hills with the old stone houses. He sensed from the first day, a kinship with the region and a stimulus from the legend that had formed around it. There was promise there - material for a creative mind. The sights and sounds, the echoes of its early history at every turn of the road, its clan of eager artists - all expressed what has come to be recognized as 'The Brandywine Tradition.'

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.) 

Howard Pyle: The Next Generation

Violet Oakly in front of her "Unity" mural in the
Senate Chamber at the Pennsylvania State Capitol

"At the time of his death, Howard Pyle's influence on American illustration was clearly visible and it was to continue to be so for at least another decade. More than threescore Pyle-trained artists were making their marks, and from their ranks came teachers to set new waves of influence in motion. The important magazine and book publishers employed a particularly high proportion of Pyle followers in their publications.

Many moved to New York, the publication hub of the country. Others were drawn to Philadelphia and Wilmington where they set up their studios. There were also those who allied themselves with art institutions and made an important commitment to years of teaching, influencing hundreds of students. Three of them, Walter H. Everett, George Harding and Thornton Oakley, held classes in Philadelphia. One, Harvey Dunn, taught in New York and Leonia, New Jersey.

Then there were those outstanding women who had studied with Pyle. The sound of their names calls up the kind of persons they were and from whence they had come - Elizabeth Shippen Green, Ethel Pennewill Brown, Ethel Franklin Betts Bains and her sister Anna Whelen Betts, Eleanor Crownfield, Frances Rogers, Olive Rush, Violet Oakley, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Sarah Stillwell Weber, Bertha Day, Wuanita Smith, Charlotte Harding, Margaretta Hinchman and others. 

Their common interests, enhanced by similar backgrounds, were evinced in the close, often lifelong, friendships they formed with each other. Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley and Jessie Wilcox Smith shared the same studio in their early days, and then built their homes and studios nearby when prosperity came to them. In contrast to many of them,Violet Oakley yearned for size and large statements. Mural design was the obvious answer. A series of smaller commissions prepared her for the years which she would devote to the major project of her life - the extended series of decorations for the Pennsylvania State Capitol at Harrisburg."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Brandywine Tradition" by Henry C. Pitz.)

Howard Pyle: Italy

"The Mermaid" by Howard Pyle, 1910

"Until now Howard Pyle had refrained from going to Europe because he was afraid that he might lose something of the American spirit, which he thought so necessary to his creative work. He made arrangements with his publishers that sufficient material for illustration should be sent to him from time to time. Then on November 22, 1910, he sailed from New York accompanied by his family and Miss Gertrude Brinckle, his secretary. 

Just at this time he began to be afflicted with exceedingly bad health. When one considers the vast number of things which he had accomplished between 1876 and 1910, one can only wonder how any human frame could bear up under such uninterrupted exertion. Literally thousands of illustrations, 19 books, many uncollected short stories, 14 mural paintings, not to mention a number of bookplates and several excellent easel paintings, all these were the productions of something less than 34 years, during which time he read voluminously, and devoted himself passionately to his family.

But in 1910 the strain began to tell. He was ill when he reached Italy, and at no time during his year of residence there did he regain the robust health which he had always enjoyed up to that time. No doubt it affected his reaction to Italy. In his correspondence he wrote:

'I do not think that Italy is what it's cracked up to be. There are buildings that are in a wonderful state of preservation, but the place itself seems dilapidated, run down and dirty. There are some exceptions to this. Among these is the Uffizi and Pitti collection of the work of the Old Masters.'

'You know, I did not think much of the old masters, seeing them in black and white, but in color they are so remarkable that I do not see how any human being painted as they did. You stand among them, and you feel that you are surrounded by a glow of soft, warm, ardent colors in which the yellows and the browns are the predominant tones and the wonderful blues and crimsons are the relieving notes. All the time I was there, I kept thinking of my pupils and wishing that they could see these pictures. It would be such a great and splendid lesson to them for all their future color work.'

After he had traveled around Italy, he came back to Florence, where he had a sharp, bilious attack, which left him in a much more serious condition than he had been before, and which hastened his death, which occurred a few days later, on November 9, 1911.

He had accomplished, however, his greatest mission in life: he had been instrumental, along with others of his early comrades, in raising the illustrative art in America to a level which had been hitherto unknown. He had by the consummate artistry of his own creative work, and by the energy of his teaching, helped to lift it from the tawdry commonplaceness in which he had found it in 1876 to the flowering beauty in which he left it in 1911."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Howard Pyle, A Chronicle" by Charles D. Abbott.)
 

 

Howard Pyle: Mural Decoration

"The Battle of Nashville" by Howard Pyle

"Toward the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth there was in America a vast increase in popular interest in mural paintings. The architects of public buildings were insisting upon the importance of decoration, and were everywhere planning wall spaces that required the work of the rising mural painters. Elihu Vedder, Edwin Austin Abbey, Edwin Blashfield, Kenyon Cox and many others were doing excellent things.

Under conditions such as these it was inevitable that Howard Pyle should turn his attention to this branch of art. For many years he had desired to paint some large mural decoration, in which he could create a lasting evidence of the historical knowledge which he had acquired. In order to gain some practical knowledge of the art, he began a series of wall decorations for a room in his house at Wilmington. These were not completed until 1905, when one of them was exhibited at the Society of Architects with considerable success. In the same year came the golden opportunity.

Cass Gilbert, the architect for the Minnesota State Capitol, gave him the commission for a large picture of 'The Battle of Nashville' to be placed in the Governor's Reception Room. It was just the sort of painting that he was supremely fitted to do, and when completed it was a magnificent triumph. A year after it had been put in position, Cass Gilbert wrote him: 

'I have just this morning returned from St. Paul, where I have had a chance to see your superb picture of 'The Battle of Nashville.' I want again to congratulate you with all my heart upon your distinguished success in this picture. I am very proud to have it in the building. It is a great work of Art.'

Then, in 1907, he painted for another building of Cass Gilbert's, the Essex County Court House in Newark, New Jersey, 'The Landing of Carteret,' which is thought by many to be the best example of his work in this style. After that was a group of pictures for the Hudson County Court House at Jersey City. Frank Millet had chosen him to paint five pictures of historical nature, illustrating the discovery of the Hudson River and the early settling of its banks.

In 1910 he came to the conclusion that for the remainder of his life he would devote himself entirely to mural decoration, and with that in view he went to Italy, that he might there study the work of the old masters, especially their coloring."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Howard Pyle, A Chronicle" by Charles D. Abbott.)

Howard Pyle: His Own School

"The Old Violin" by Howard Pyle

"By March 17, 1900, Howard Pyle had made plans to open his own school in Wilmington. He described his goals in a letter:

'My final aim in teaching will not be essentially the production of illustrators of books, but rather the production of painters of pictures. For I believe that the painters of true American art are yet to be produced. Such men as Winslow Homer and [George] Fuller in figure painting, and a group of landscape painters headed by George Inness as yet are almost the only occupants of the field. To this end I regard magazine and book illustration as a ground from which to produce painters. 

My plan of teaching is somewhat as follows: the students who come to me will be supposed to have studied drawing and painting as taught in the schools. My first object shall be to teach them to paint the draped and costumed model so that it shall possess the essentials of a practical picture. To teach this requires considerable knowledge not usually possessed by the artist-teachers in the schools. This knowledge I feel myself competent to impart. I believe I am not devoid of a sense of color, and I trust I will be able so to instruct the people as to preserve whatever color talent he may possess. My experience is that within a year of such teaching, the people will be sufficiently grounded in a practical knowledge of painting to be able to embark upon illustrative work.

I shall make it a requisite that the pupils whom I choose shall possess, first of all, imagination; secondly, artistic ability; thirdly, color and drawing; and I shall probably not accept in any who are deficient in any one of these three requisites. My instruction would embrace not only daily criticism of the work done in class, but also instruction in composition, facial and figure construction, perspective, and proportion. I shall give lectures perhaps twice a week in the evenings.'

The school was accordingly founded. Nearly all of the first members were from the old class at the Drexel Institute, but as people heard of the new idea, there began to be applications for admission from all over the United States. In 1903, there were between two and three hundred such applications, but only three of the aspirants were admitted. Howard Pyle used the utmost discrimination in making his choices."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Howard Pyle, A Chronicle" by Charles D. Abbott.)

Howard Pyle: Summer School at Chadd's Ford

"Untitled Vignette," picturing Howard Pyle painting
Fort Ticonderoga with Ethan Allan looking on

"In 1898, Howard Pyle established a summer class at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania. He felt that to a limited number of pupils he could give during the summer months so intensive and so practical training that it would repay any sacrifice which he might have to make. The Drexel Institute agreed to give scholarships to a certain number of talented pupils. He on his side was to give instruction without receiving any salary. 

An old mill on the banks of the Brandywine was turned into a studio, and the meadows around were used for all sorts of outdoor sketching. Here on the site of the Battle of the Brandywine, he taught his young protégés, among other things, to draw the Revolutionary soldier. 

The keynote of the summer school was work. All day long he kept the young men and women at their easels, inspiring them with the enthusiasm which he always had at his command. Then, oftentimes in the evening, he and Mrs. Pyle would entertain them at the big country house in which they lived during the summers. Every now and then he would give them a day off, and they would all go on a picnic to Valley Forge or some other interesting place in the surrounding country. 

Toward the end of the first summer he wrote in a letter: 

"A week from tomorrow our summer school closes. I think we have produced some very good results, though I am not sure but the high achievement for which I was ambitious has been entirely attained. I dare say I expect too much of my students, but I think it is better to expect too much than too little. By the end of the summer we will have illustrated five books containing somewhat upwards of 50 drawings. We will have made about a dozen very excellent landscapes and have accomplished four studies of the draped figure, of which three examples each - twelve examples in all - may be exhibited this coming fall with credit to the students and to the Drexel Institute. 

In our efforts to build up at art school upon the useful and practical lines that have been laid down for it, nothing has so far advanced those endeavors as the work of this school during the past season. In two instances a doubtful student has been converted into an artist of very decided promise. And all the students of the class have shown more advance in two months of summer study than they have in a year of ordinary instruction.This, of course might have been largely due to the fact of the contact of the students with nature and of their free and wholesome life in the open air. Their labors were assiduous and unrelaxing, their recreation being taken only in the evenings. They prepared for work by eight in the morning, and they rarely concluded their labors until five or six in the afternoon. Apart from the great and abundant happiness they enjoyed, they were able also to earn considerable amounts of money from their art work."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Howard Pyle, A Chronicle" by Charles D. Abbott.)