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.)