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.)