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.)