N.C. Wyeth Quotes

"Thoreau's tremendous force to me as an artist, lies within his ability to boil up the little into the big! To elevate the little into the great is genius."

"His (Howard Pyle's) first words to me will forever ring in my ears as an unceasing appeal to my conscience: "My boy, you have come here for help. Then you must live your best and work hard!"...from that moment I knew that he meant infinitely more to me than a mere teacher of illustration."

"To paint the sleeve, become the arm!"

"I find the earliest years of my life are the source of my best inspiration." This is a recollection of his growing up on a homestead built by his ancestors in 1730. As a boy he saddled horses, used scythes, split wood and plowed fields.

N.C. Wyeth is much more to me now, seven days later, than he was last Wednesday.

N C Wyeth Did Murals - Apotheosis of the Family

Can you name the artist who painted this mural? Of course it's N C Wyeth's week on this blog and the title for today provides a huge clue, so the answer must be N C Wyeth. Seriously though, who would have thought that the master of illustration would paint this mural or be asked to take on such a mammoth project? 

Commissioned in 1932 by the Wilmington Savings Fund Society (WSFS) in Wilmington, Delaware when N C really wanted to do something other than be "just an illustrator", the mural is made up of five canvas pieces that span a total of 60 feet by 19 feet. For the voyeurs amongst us, N C Wyeth's youngest son, the famous painter Andrew Wyeth then 15 years old, is standing as a naked adolescent, hoisting a bow and arrow.

The mural depicts a family standing in front of a house, surrounded by neighbors. They have been harvesting fruit, weaving baskets, planting crops, hauling fish and chopping timber. It also shows the seasons, as spring merges into summer, then autumn and winter. Some say this is a theme N.C. Wyeth may have borrowed from his son-in-law, Peter Hurd. Done in the grand manner style of murals from the 19th century, N C also used bright colors, unusual perspectives and powerful abstract forms of clouds, smoke and sea, reflecting Wyeth's interest in avant- garde Russian art, and works by Marc Chagall.

Although Wilmington Savings Fund Society restored the mural in 1998, the WSFS, in 2007, deinstalled and has donated the mural to the Delaware Historical Society during the renovations and recreation of the bank edifice as a different commercial endeavor. The Delaware Historical Society planned to install the mural in its Research Library facility down the street in fittingly another former bank building. Work to de-install and store the mural was contracted to Ely Inc. and entailed its removal and storage. "Removal of this oversized work was achieved by removing canvas panels attached to a wall and rolling them onto five large tubes. The removal project was directed and overseen by Ely and called upon the services of five different conservators, an environmental safety company and a hazardous material abatement company."

How The Artist See's Himself

This is an oil on canvas self portrait of the artist, he painted it in 1913. He was 31 years old, just a year older than I am now.
Lately I have been realizing how hard it is to see oneself. My mind interprets me differently from moment to moment. John said trying to understand my moods is like watching a fish under the water, you never know where its going. Sadly, this feels true.
N.C. Wyeth paints himself white in a dark room. At this point he was a famed illustrator who wanted to be known as a painter. He made a great living illustrating for magazines and books (Treasure Island, Robin Hood, Last of the Mohicans) but he felt painting was the more impressive craft. And paint he did, he tried landscapes in an Impressionist style and portraits that recall the work of the American Regionalist artists, but he never really got what he wanted. I guess it wasn't the enormous house and flooding bank account he was after. I think he enjoyed living there, and I think his illustrations and his paintings prove he had a fantastic imagination into which he could escape. But I get the feeling that at times even great big fish dart here and there in search of something.

N C Wyeth and Grandson Both Die on Tracks

When do you know a train is approaching? Amazingly, the time between when you hear, see, or feel a train's approach and when it crosses your path can be so short that you don't have the time to react. Whatever happened that sunlit morning in Pennsylvania, both N C Wyeth and his grandson Newell, who had yet to turn four, died in the crash. Newell was Nathaniel (N C's son) and Caroline Wyeth's second born child. The first had also died but in that child's case shortly after birth. Newell had become the cornerstone of N C's life when he wasn't painting. Every morning N C would pick Newell up and take him on his round of errands. They had stopped at least one other time that morning to look at the beauty of the countryside.

The happenings of that morning and the intrigue going on in the Wyeth family at the time make Wyeth's life loom large as do his canvases. It's all very gothic and well documented in David Michaelis' biography of N C published in 1998. Having been "trapped" in a car myself when a locomotive has approached, I can only hope that young Newell was unaware of the steam engine as it hurtled towards the car.

Caroline Wyeth had written many poems in her life including this one sometime after the death of her first baby.


A Child Is Born

The mind cannot accept a wound
too deep upon the heart.
When tragedy with cutting knife
descends, the two must part.
The heart to stagger on alone,
unsuccored and unseen,
'Till time at last comes to her side
her painful wound to clean.

Perhaps those words were of comfort to her with this second tragedy, the death of both her young son and her father-in-law/confidant, N C. Wyeth.

A Great Story

I searched for "McKeon's Graft" by Luke Thrice, who was really John Russell, and it can be found in Russell’s book In Dark Places, published in 1923. The only copy in Oregon is in the library at Oregon State. There are 5 library copies in the state of California, and a listing of places I can borrow it in Canada. I’m not sure if they’ll let me borrow a copy there, but if I get there I’ll have my passport handy, incase they need two pieces of ID. Maybe I could go there by train. The Portland Art Museum’s exhibiting of a Wyeth train illustration particularly interests me. Wyeth drew, painted and did watercolor of countless subjects, but the train scene foreshadows his untimely death. In a car, stalled on the tracks, a speeding train hit him as he sat with his grandson for the last time. The day before that he started a painting called “First Farmer on the Land” for Country Gentleman Magazine. If things had been different, and Wyeth had finished it, and Portland had that painting and later he’d been killed by a tractor, I would sense the same unnerving satisfaction. I don’t know why, but maybe it has something to do with how I’ll tell the story. If I do get a chance to tell someone his life all the way to the end, I want to be in front of that speeding train, those windswept scarves on reeling bandits. I will slowly breathe out the final line to his life “and then he stalled the car on the tracks, and the train hit.” because that’s the way to end a great story.

N C Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Luke Thrice and the Seamless Web

Why did Wyeth paint The Great Train Robbery? He had gone West in 1904 on a trip funded by Scribner's Magazine. Howard Pyle, the great illustrator and head of the Howard Pyle School of Art, had recommended Wyeth for the trip. Wyeth had painted the West from his imagination after reading of the adventures in this vast open area, full of colorful characters. After returning from his second trip there, Wyeth was becoming well established in the magazine illustration world. At one point, he challenged Pyle's criticisms of his works and struck out on his own. Even though he desired to paint other topics, magazines still wanted more and more illustrations of the West. In 1912, The Great Train Robbery was the cover story for New Story Magazine, vol. IV, no. 6. Wyeth painted this action scene for the story "McKeon's Graft" by Luke Thrice. Who might Luke Thrice be? The "internets" have spotty linkage to sites talking of Mr. Thrice. However, at some point on that seamless web you can discover that John Russell, author and adventurer, wrote fiction, both novels and short stories under his own name and also Luke Thrice, Edward Rutledge, Andrew Peirce, George Jerry Osborn, Matthew Primus and others. Russell was definitely a man of many personalities!

N.C. Wyeth

The Great Train Robbery is in the American collection. I'm eye level with a gun. I wonder who would come if I designed a tour around weaponry. This would be my first stop.
There is a diagonal band of killer objects. It starts lower left as a knife in the mouth of a man crouching on a swiftly moving train. He is below a stick-em-up shooter who points a gun in the faces of shadowed train riders, this happens in the very middle of the canvas. In between the knife gritted between the one man's teeth, and the gun in the hand of the other, is another knife tucked into the standing man's belt. No one in the painting wants to fight. "Are you afraid?" the painting whispers.
N.C. Wyeth dabbed cool sky blue to the underside of the robber's wind swept scarf, the swung open train door is warm pumpkin orange. A shadow is drawn over the hidden faces of surrendering riders. What a master storyteller he was.
"And then the train veered to the left." I would say, and while they thought about it, I would turn around and head down the stairs to the Asian gallery in search of some really long swords.