N.C. Wyeth 1882-1945 Correspondence Collection of Betsy James Wyeth 1921-2020

Newell Convers Wyeth was born on October 22, 1882, in Needham, Massachusetts. Growing up on a farm, he developed a deep love of nature. His mother, Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth (1858-1925), the daughter of Swiss immigrants, encouraged his early artistic inclinations in the face of opposition from his father, Andrew Newell Wyeth II (1853-1929), a descendant of the first Wyeth to arrive in the New World in the mid-17th century. His father encouraged a more practical use of his talents, and young Convers, as he was then known, attended Mechanic Arts High School in Boston through May 1899, concentrating on drafting. With his mother's support he transferred to Massachusetts Normal Art School and there, instructor Richard Andrew urged him toward illustration. He studied with Eric Pape and Charles W. Reed and then painted with George L. Noyes in Annisquam, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1901.

On the advice of two friends, artists Clifford Ashley and Henry Peck, Wyeth decided to travel to Wilmington, Delaware, in October 1902, to join the Howard Pyle School of Art. Howard Pyle, one of the country's most renowned illustrators, left a teaching position at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia to open his own school of illustration in Wilmington. Pyle was an inspired teacher and Wyeth an attentive pupil. The master emphasized the use of dramatic effects in painting and the importance of sound, personal knowledge of one's subject, teachings Wyeth quickly assimilated and employed throughout his career. The astute young man recognized the value of Pyle's instruction, writing to his mother just after his arrival, “the composition lecture...opened my eyes more than any talk I ever heard.” (BJW, p. 21) In less than five months, Wyeth successfully submitted a cover illustration to the Saturday Evening Post.

Following Pyle's maxim to paint only from experience, Wyeth made two trips between 1904 and 1906 to the American West. He spent much of these trips simply absorbing the Western experience which allowed him to paint images that would place him among the top illustrators of his day. By 1907, Wyeth was heralded in Outing magazine as “one of our greatest, if not our greatest, painter of American outdoor life” His pictures had appeared in many of the most popular magazines of the period, such as Century, Harper's Monthly, Ladies' Home Journal, McClure's, Outing, and Scribner's.

In 1906, Wyeth married Carolyn Brenneman Bockius of Wilmington. The couple lived for a short time in the city, but moved in 1908 to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 10 miles north of Wilmington along the Brandywine Creek. Chadds Ford had been the site of Pyle's summer school, and the rolling hills and sycamore trees of the Brandywine Valley had already exerted a profound influence on Wyeth, subduing his enthusiasm for the rough and tumble west. In 1911, the Wyeths purchased 18 acres of property in Chadds Ford, not far from a Revolutionary War battlefield. The proximity appealed to the artist's abiding love of history. Immediately the Wyeths set about to build a house and studio. They would raise five talented children on this property and the valley landscape would become almost sacred to the displaced New Englander.

In 1911, the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons engaged Wyeth to illustrate Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, his first commission in Scribner's popular series of classic stories. The 17 paintings that make up the set are masterpieces of American illustration. Their size and scale, unusual in illustrations of the period, give the paintings a heroic quality that is apparent even in the greatly reduced reproductions. Within the set of illustrations, Wyeth brilliantly combined action and character study, enriching the narrative beyond the text. In every canvas, his superb sense of color and his ability to mix painterly passages with authentic detail prove him a master of the art. Complex compositions and his skillful use of intense light contrasted with deep shadow contribute to a palpable dramatic tension inherent in the paintings. These pictures made the Wyeth-illustrated edition of Treasure Island a favorite of generations of readers.

The success of Treasure Island insured Wyeth a long career with Scribner’s, illustrating in succeeding years many classic stories. Among the most famous titles are Kidnapped (1913), The Black Arrow (1916), The Boy's King Arthur (1917), The Mysterious Island (1918), The Last of the Mohicans (1919), The Deerslayer (1925), and The Yearling (1939). He also created illustrations for other publishers, for books such as Robin Hood (David McKay, 1917); Robinson Crusoe (Cosmopolitan, 1920); Rip Van Winkle (David McKay, 1921); Men of Concord (Houghton-Mifflin, 1936); and Trending Into Maine (Little, Brown, 1938).

Despite his fame as an illustrator, Wyeth yearned to be known as a painter. The distinction between painting and illustration was an important one, with illustration carrying a pejorative connotation that Wyeth felt keenly all his life. Even though the commissioned work earned him income to support his family, he tried to escape the confines of textual limitations with personal paintings that included landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. From lyrical landscapes in an Impressionist style to powerful portraits of fishermen that recall the work of the American Regionalist artists, Wyeth experimented throughout his career with a wide variety of subjects and styles. However, he never did attain the personal satisfaction or public recognition that he sought.

Wyeth also enjoyed a national reputation as a muralist. His earliest mural commissions (Hotel Utica, Utica, New York, 1911, and Traymore Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1915) have been destroyed. In 1920 he created two Civil War battle scenes for the Missouri State Capitol (Jefferson City), the first in a long line of commissions he undertook in the 1920s and 1930s. Among them are murals for the Federal Reserve Bank, Boston; Westtown School, Westtown, Pennsylvania; First National Bank of Boston; Hotel Roosevelt and Franklin Savings Bank, both in New York City; Hubbard Hall, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.; First Mechanics National Bank, Trenton, New Jersey; and Wilmington Savings Fund Society, Wilmington, Delaware. Many of these murals depict historical events, others such as The Giant for Westtown School and The Apotheosis of the Family for the Wilmington Savings Fund Society have allegorical themes. In 1940 Wyeth accepted a commission from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York City, for an ambitious scheme illustrating Pilgrim life. The second phase of this cycle was incomplete at his death and finished by his son Andrew and son-in-law John McCoy. Most of Wyeth's murals have survived, but many are no longer at their original sites.

Throughout his career Wyeth created images for magazine advertisements and calendars. Several paintings commissioned by the Cream of Wheat Company in 1906-07 rank along with his best Western work. Later pictures advertised products of the American Tobacco Company, Aunt Jemima, Blue Buckle Overalls, Coca-Cola, General Electric, and Steinway & Sons, among others. For companies such as New York Life Insurance, Morrell & Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad he produced calendar and poster images. During both World Wars, Wyeth contributed patriotic images to government and private agencies such as the American Red Cross.

N.C. Wyeth died at a railroad crossing in Chadds Ford in 1945, when an oncoming train hit his car. He had lived long enough to see his children excel in talents he had nurtured—Nathaniel as an inventor; Henriette, Carolyn and Andrew as painters; and Ann as a musician and composer. Andrew Wyeth's son Jamie, also a painter, continues his grandfather's legacy.

The Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, holds the largest collection of N.C. Wyeth's artwork, and offers tours of his Chadds Ford home and studio. The museum, in conjunction with the Wyeth Foundation for American Art and Scala Publishers, Ltd., published N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings in 2008. Visitors to the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, can see many of the paintings Wyeth did of the Maine coast, where he spent summers from 1920 to 1945.

- Biography by Christine Podmaniczky, Curator Emerita and author of the N.C. Wyeth Catalogue Raisonne, written for the digital N.C. Wyeth Catalogue Raisonné and published on the Brandywine Museum of Art’s website: https://www.brandywine.org/museum/nc-wyeth-biography

Born in East Aurora, New York, on September 26, 1921, Betsy Merle James was the daughter of the late Merle James and Elizabeth Browning James. The youngest of three daughters, Betsy was a graduate of East Aurora High School in New York and briefly attended Colby Junior College in New London, New Hampshire. Her family vacationed in, and ultimately moved to, Cushing, Maine, where at age 17 she met Andrew Wyeth on July 12, 1939—his twenty-second birthday. The couple was married the following year on May 15, 1940, and moved to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Their marriage spanned nearly seven decades before Andrew’s death in 2009.

Early on in their marriage, Betsy took up the role of Andrew’s business manager. She made a significant contribution to the study of American art. Guided by Josephine Hopper—wife of American realist painter Edward Hopper—she began keeping extensive records that would become the basis for her husband’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné. After the death of her father-in-law, N.C. Wyeth, she compiled and edited The Wyeths: The Letters of N. C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, a book that spurred a reassessment of his career. In 1976, she published her first book on her husband’s work, Wyeth at Kuerners, followed by Christina’s World in 1982. She also worked with a young group of filmmakers to produce the award-winning documentary, Andrew Wyeth Self Portrait: Snow Hill, in 1995.

Betsy and Andrew Wyeth founded the Wyeth Endowment for American Art, the precursor to the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, in 1968. It is now the third largest funder of exhibitions, publications and fellowships devoted to the study of American Art. Through its generosity, major projects such as the research for, and publication of N.C. Wyeth: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings were made possible.

In the late 1960s, Betsy was a powerful force behind the creation of the Brandywine River Museum (now Brandywine Museum of Art) in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She encouraged George A. “Frolic” Weymouth, one of the founders of the Brandywine Conservancy in 1969, to purchase, renovate and transform a 19th-century gristmill along the Brandywine River into an art museum, and promised to lend works by all three generations of Wyeth artists—N. C., Andrew, and Jamie, and other family artists such as Carolyn and Henriette Wyeth, Peter Hurd and John McCoy. The Museum opened to much success in 1971 and has since become internationally recognized for its collection of American art, most notably by the Wyeth family. Over the years, Andrew and Betsy Wyeth would donate many important paintings both to the Brandywine and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. Following Andrew Wyeth’s death in 2009, Betsy generously gifted her husband’s studio to the Brandywine Museum of Art. Now a National Historic Landmark, the Andrew Wyeth Studio is open to the public seasonally for tours.

In addition to managing the business side of Andrew Wyeth’s career, Betsy had a passion for historic houses and architecture. With her keen eye and talent for design, Betsy excelled at restoring old buildings, including an old mill complex on the Brandywine Creek that she converted into the couple’s Pennsylvania home and studio. She was continually drawn to the Maine coast, where she and Andrew had spent much of their childhoods, and over decades they bought three islands—Southern, Allen, and Benner. To Betsy, these islands served as a blank canvas where she could realize her creative potential and her dedication to preserving historic New England architecture. Her carefully curated interiors and groupings of buildings are depicted in many of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings and watercolors and were featured in magazines such as Architectural Digest.

A muse for her husband, Betsy is represented in several works by Andrew Wyeth, sometimes embodied only by a highly personal object or setting that reminded her husband of her presence. A candid and astute partner, Betsy played an important role in his career. As Andrew Wyeth commented in 1966 to his biographer, Richard Meryman, “Betsy galvanized me at the time I needed it,” adding “She’s made me into a painter that I would not have been otherwise. . . . she made me see more clearly what I wanted.”

Along with her interests in architecture and design, Betsy was an avid collector of art, especially of folk art, and she was highly knowledgeable on Pennsylvania antiques. She was also heavily involved in the two communities in which she lived. Betsy was a founding member of the Chadds Ford Historical Society, inspired the creation of the Island Institute in Maine, and financed the launch of its Island Journal publication. In 1987, Betsy Wyeth founded Up East Incorporated, which supports environmental and ecological research, preservation and education in mid-coast Maine. Through her work with Up East Inc., Allen Island has transformed into a living learning laboratory and working waterfront. In partnership with Colby College, students and researchers now study ecology, chemistry, and cultural geography on the island.

Betsy James Wyeth is survived by her sons, Nicholas Wyeth and his wife, Lee, of Elkton, MD and Cushing, ME, and James “Jamie” Browning Wyeth, of Wilmington, DE and Tenants Harbor, ME; her granddaughter, Victoria Browning Wyeth, of Philadelphia, PA; as well as several nieces and nephews including Amy Cook Morey of the Wyeth Study Center in Rockland, ME.

- Biography and press release published by the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art in memory of Betsy Wyeth, 2020. For more information, please see the Museum’s website: https://www.brandywine.org/press-room/press-releases/brandywine-mourns-loss-betsy-james-wyeth-1921-2020