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The Business of Illustration
Being an illustrator also necessitated being a businessman. N. C. Wyeth managed his business from this desk, writing in long-hand to his clients, authors, publishers, advertisers, and printers to clarify a historical point, fine-tune an image, postpone a due-date, and negotiate compensation. The paperwork, done without secretarial help, must have taken precious hours from painting. In the early 1940s, when his personal painting became increasingly important to him, Wyeth hired an agency to represent him in his commercial work.
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Letter from American Artists Company to N. C. Wyeth, August 10, 1942. Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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William E. Phelps (1897-1967), photographer, N. C. Wyeth at his desk, Chadds Ford Studio, ca. 1945, Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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Palladian Window
The main feature of Wyeth’s 1911 studio is the 220-paned Palladian window that looks out over the hills of the Brandywine Valley. While it does not face true north, the window provided the natural light that Wyeth always preferred while painting. It also provided the artist with a classically framed view of the world outside—the expansive Brandywine Valley in the distance, his own homestead and fields in the foreground. His letters are full of lyrical descriptions of the weather in the valley and the flora and fauna he observed in great detail from this window.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Smock
N. C. Wyeth wore this painting smock prior to his death in October 1945. The paint-spattered coverall bears witness to the exuberance with which the artist applied colors to his canvases and robustly wiped excess paint from his brushes onto the sleeve and the lower parts of the coat. The linen garment, with its layers and layers of impasto, resembles an abstract canvas composed of pigments from the paintings on which the artist had most recently worked.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Drum
Like any of the most well-respected western illustrators who worked from eastern studios, Wyeth purchased artifacts associated with Indigenous peoples during his western trips. His collection included buckskin and beaded clothing, moccasins, clay pots and drums, most of which was manufactured for the tourist trade and sold at emporiums in Denver. The pieces decorated his home and studio and were used to rekindle his memories as he painted western-themed images. This large drum was purchased at M. J. Kohlberg’s store in Denver in 1906.
Drum, probably late 19th century, attributed to Lakota tribe by the Denver dealer Kohlberg in 1906. Tree trunk, skin, and rawhide
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Life Masks
N. C. Wyeth had several plaster life masks in his studio, as well as plaster busts to help him accurately depict historical figures such as Beethoven, Washington, Lafayette, and John Paul Jones. Over the course of his career, Wyeth painted Abraham Lincoln many times and in addition to contemporary photographs of the president, this mask, a commercial copy of the Volk life mask taken in 1860, provided him with details of the sixteenth president’s unmistakable features—well-known details clients and readers expected him to render perfectly.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Lantern Slide Projector
Beginning in the mid-1930s, N. C. Wyeth availed himself of this lantern slide projector mainly for commercial work. Working with company advertising departments, such as Hercules and John Morrell & Company and with advertising agencies such as Brown & Bigelow and American Artists, Wyeth would prepare a detailed composition drawing for a commission. He had a photography studio make a glass slide from the drawing, then sent the actual drawing to the client for correction and approval. Wyeth then projected the slide onto a stretched canvas or Masonite panel, transferring the design with charcoal or pencil; he applied color pigments after carefully redrawing the composition by aid of the projection.
Wyeth also employed this process for mural work—overlaying the final composition with a grid and assigning a lantern slide to each square in the grid in order to enlarge the design. Over 300 lantern slides found in Wyeth’s studio document the preliminary stages of his later commissions.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Telephone
Despite the rural lifestyle Wyeth enjoyed in Chadds Ford, the artist needed ready access to businesses in Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York and beyond to maintain his own business. In the early decades of the 20th century, several railroads served Chadds Ford; Wyeth was able to go to New York and back in a day and could easily ship crated paintings to printers and publishers. Electricity was installed in his home and studio in 1923.
Even before the advent of electricity, however, telephone service was available since early models generated their own power. Wyeth’s original studio telephone, dependent on a connection with local operators, looked much like this replacement set.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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A Family of Artists
The children of N. C. Wyeth who became artists—Henriette, Carolyn and Andrew—had their initial training in their father’s studio. Wyeth instructed them in careful drawing with geometric forms and in still life painting using the crocks, bottles, and props he had collected. Young Henriette and young Andrew attempted self-portraits, which their father hung as a pair on the studio doors. Henriette’s self-portrait was done when she was about 17 years old.
Henriette Wyeth (1907-1997), Self-Portrait, ca. 1924, oil on canvas, 20 1/4 × 18”. Anonymous gift, 2000
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N. C. Wyeth Self-Portrait
Throughout his career, N. C. Wyeth painted portraits of family members and about a half dozen self-portraits. This appealing example hangs on the studio’s southwest wall between portraits the artist had done of his mother and father. Wyeth depicted himself in a cloak and top hat that came from his studio costume collection, against a modernist design of multicolored, fractured prisms. The contrast between the carefully painted figure in old-fashioned garb and the abstract background creates an engaging visual tension and generates an enigmatic quality to the picture.
N. C. Wyeth (1882 - 1945), Self-portrait in Top Hat and Cape, ca. 1927, oil on canvas, 40 1/4 × 36 ½”. Private collection
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Reference Books
In addition to a fine library of fiction, essays, and letters shelved in his home, Wyeth maintained a library of approximately 900 books and pamphlets in his studio. These were mainly reference materials, crucial to an illustrator who had to render people, places, and objects with some accuracy. The selection is far ranging—books about ancient Scottish costumes, New England sailing vessels, biographies of famous people, and descriptions of daily life in places near and far during all historical periods.
Also on the studio bookshelves were monographs on artists Wyeth admired—for example, Albrecht Dürer, Winslow Homer, Rockwell Kent, and Rembrandt, and runs of Harper’s Magazines and National Geographics. In many of the books and magazines, paper markers, penciled marks or paint-smudged pages attest to Wyeth’s use of these resources.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Still Life
Throughout his career, N. C. Wyeth practiced still life painting as a way to hone his skills in composition and color. He recommended this practice to fellow artists and used still life as a teaching tool for his own son and daughters when they entered his studio for instruction.
Dusty Bottle is a tour de force of painting, taking the artist only three hours to complete as he boasted in an inscription on the painting’s upper right corner. When the painting was shown at the 1926 Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts exhibition, newspaper accounts mentioned viewers trying to “wipe” the image, so life-like was the dust on the bottle. While an amusing trompe l’oeil, Dusty Bottle is a close study of how different materials refract light. In the sinuous curve of the green glass bottle, Wyeth noted the reflection of the huge Palladian window in the studio.
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N. C. Wyeth (1882 - 1945), The Dusty Bottle, 1924, oil on canvas, 37 1/4 × 39 7/”. Gift of Miss Mary M. R. Phelps, 1973
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N. C. Wyeth (1882 - 1945), The Dusty Bottle (detail), 1924, oil on canvas, 37 1/4 × 39 7/”. Gift of Miss Mary M. R. Phelps, 1973
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Plaster Casts
In the great tradition of 19th century academic art education, art students began their lessons by drawing from commercially available plaster casts of well-known sculptures or bas reliefs. This exercise allowed artists to study the human form, perspective, and the effects of light. Even Howard Pyle, who preferred his students draw from live models and actual objects, kept casts in his studio—in March 1903, he set the young N. C. Wyeth to drawing from casts half a day every day for several weeks to improve his skills.
This bas relief of Virgin and Child, manufactured by P. P. Caproni & Brothers of Boston, is a replica of Michelangelo’s Pitti Tondo. The cast originally hung in Howard Pyle’s studio and was given to Wyeth by the Pyle family after Howard Pyle’s death.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Family Living Room
Betsy Wyeth combined her flair for decorating and her love of antiques by integrating pieces such as this carved wooden lion’s head into the family’s living space. For years, this head, one of a pair which originally ornamented a circus wagon, watched over the Wyeth family’s daily activities and special celebrations, no doubt firing the imaginations of their two young sons and countless visitors. In its original state, the head was most likely painted or gilded.
Photograph of Nicholas and Jamie Wyeth, Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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Military Miniatures Collection
In the mid-1920s, the young Andrew Wyeth found creative outlets in his collections of miniature figures—armored knights, Revolutionary war soldiers, and legions of WWI doughboys. His knights would lay siege to a homemade model castle; his WWI recruits hunkered outdoors in actual trenches as “bombs” exploded above. As a budding artist, he recorded these battles in his juvenile drawings and watercolors; the immersive experiences showed him how the powers of his imagination could provide rich artistic inspiration, a lesson he never forgot.
Throughout his life, Andrew Wyeth continued to enjoy and add to his miniature collections, displaying the pieces both in his studio and home.
Photograph by Rick Echelmeyer
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Wardrobe
Betsy Wyeth acquired this southeastern Pennsylvania wardrobe with the help of her neighbor and antiquarian Dr. Margaret Handy. The term “kas” derives from 17th century Dutch wardrobes of a similar form.
Positioned in the studio’s main room where it held costumes and Wyeth’s collection of WWI helmets, the kas occasionally appeared in his sketches and watercolors. Such objects fascinated the artist—with their known and secret histories, they stimulated his imagination and suggested countless stories to explore.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Wardrobe, 1985, watercolor on paper. Private Collection © 2021 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Watching The Big Parade
Andrew Wyeth was eight years old when he first saw The Big Parade, King Vidor’s epic tale of WWI. The film made an indelible impression on him and over the course of his life he rewatched it hundreds of times here in this studio, finding endless inspiration. The story spoke to his boyhood fascination with World War I and his complex, multilayered friendship with his Chadds Ford neighbor Karl Kuerner, a former German soldier. In scholar Henry Adams’s words, the film helped Wyeth “grasp how events from his own life connected with universal human themes.” Wyeth incorporated imagery reminiscent of scenes from The Big Parade in several of his most intimate and important tempera paintings, Christina’s World and Winter 1946.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Jamie Wyeth’s First Studio
In 1960, the Wyeths left this home and moved to the other side of Chadds Ford. Andrew Wyeth continued to paint in this building, however, and to support his son Jamie he offered the young artist studio space in what had been the family’s living room. For eight years, this was Jamie Wyeth’s Chadds Ford studio, where he created such notable paintings as Portrait of Shorty (1963), Draft Age (1965) and Portrait of John F. Kennedy (1967).
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Jamie Wyeth painting in his first studio. Photo courtesy of Christian Sanderson Museum, Chadds Ford, PA ©2016
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Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), Draft Age, 1965, oil on canvas, 36 x 30”. Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Randy L. Christofferson; Mr. And Mrs. George Strawbridge, Jr.; Mary Alice Dorrance Malone Foundation; Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Foundation of PA I, Inc.; The William Stamps Farish Fund; Mr. And Mrs. James W. Stewart, III; and MBNA America, 1999. © Jamie Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Monologue
Andrew Wyeth often pictured his own studio, as seen in this portrait, Monologue. The title refers to what Andrew Wyeth described as the model’s talkative nature. Willard Snowden, the subject of this painting, became a model for Andrew Wyeth after knocking on the artist’s studio door looking for work in the early 1960s. Wyeth invited Snowden to live in the building for a time, doing handyman jobs and posing. Surrounded by emptiness in the large, barren room just outside Wyeth’s main studio, Snowden seems to be delivering a great speech to an unseen audience. Texture and light and shadow play key roles in this painting, with the light focused on the man’s expressive face and hands contrasted against the darkness of the room.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Monologue, 1965, dry brush watercolor on paper, 22 1/4 × 28 ½”. Anonymous gift, 1983 © 2021 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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North Light
In 1925, N. C. Wyeth originally converted this 19th century schoolhouse into a studio for his daughter Henriette. The former entrance to the school was replaced by a large, multipaned window that served as the principal light source for the studio. The new window faced north and provided an even light; old windows on the east side of the room were boarded so light came from only one direction. Once Andrew Wyeth began using the studio in 1940, he preferred to paint almost exclusively by natural light which he regulated by thin muslin curtains.
Photograph by Carlos Alejandro
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Model Barn
From 1908 to 1911, N. C. and Carolyn Wyeth rented a property in Chadds Ford on which stood a deteriorating barn. As a symbol of the local agrarian way of life, the barn became a favorite motif of the artist, even after the family moved to their own home on the other side of town. In 1918, Wyeth used discarded packing crates to construct this model of the barn for his daughter Carolyn’s Christmas present. The artist and his wife purchased miniature farm-yard animals and set the barn in a boxed landscape, providing an immersive environment to foster the budding creativity of his animal-loving daughter. Wyeth considered the nurturing of a child’s imagination one of the most important duties of parenthood.
Image 1- Photographer unknown, Wyeth family Christmas, 1918, Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
Image 2- N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), Pyle's Barn, ca. 1917-1921, oil on canvas, 32 1/4 × 39 ¾”. Gift of Amanda K. Berls, 1980
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Blind Pew
Until 1919, many of the paintings N. C. Wyeth created for book illustrations became the property of publishers, especially those created for the Scribner’s Classic series. In the mid-1960s, when there was still little interest in illustrations, Andrew and Betsy Wyeth began to buy work by N. C. Wyeth, concentrating on canvases from his most popular books such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Boy’s King Arthur.
One of their most important purchases was this memorable painting of the pirate Old Pew from Treasure Island, which hung in the family’s living room. Eventually the Wyeths acquired four more paintings from the classic tale.
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), Tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping and calling for his comrades, 1911, oil on canvas, 47 x 38”. Illustration for Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911). The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection
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Fencing
The windowsill contains examples of Andrew Wyeth’s fencing equipment. The artist nurtured an interest in fencing that must have been rooted in his childhood games and his obsession with movies of swashbucklers such as Errol Flynn. As an adult, Wyeth acquired the slim epees of friendly competition and often engaged visitors right in the large room of the studio!
Photographer unknown, Andrew Wyeth fencing with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., ca.1970s. Gift of Mrs. Andrew Wyeth, 2010
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Christmas
N. C. Wyeth believed that creative adults retained the spirit of childhood. To that end, he cultivated his children's imaginations, fostering their interests and staging elaborate occasions to generate a rich bank of memories. Holidays such as Halloween and Christmas provided him with infinite inspiration. When his children were young, Wyeth would climb to the roof of the house clad in a home-made Santa suit with sleighbells such as these in hand, to announce Santa’s arrival on Christmas Eve. Moments later, in dimly lit rooms, the children would glimpse an elusive, fur-clad figure as he slipped in and out, impressing on fertile imaginations the wonder, magic, and mystery of the holiday.
N. C. Wyeth (1882 - 1945), Old Kris, ca. 1925, oil on canvas, 39 1/2 × 29 ½”. The Wyeth Foundation, Chadds Ford, PA
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Island Funeral
In 1920, N. C. Wyeth purchased an old sea-captain’s house on a rocky shore in Port Clyde, Maine. Although the place would provide his family with relief from the intense heat of the Brandywine Valley summers, he sensed the small coastal community would also furnish him with an invigorating source for creative inspiration. By the late 1920s, as his focus changed to mural work and personal painting, he discovered a myriad of subjects in the fishermen and seascape of Port Clyde.
Island Funeral, one of the most important paintings of Wyeth’s career, was painted here in his Chadds Ford studio. His daughter Henriette documented her father’s accomplishment through a portrait. The arresting image depicts the funeral of a local fisherman that took place not far offshore from the artist’s home in Port Clyde. A multi-layered masterpiece, Island Funeral is Wyeth’s tribute to a dying breed of fishermen on the rugged Maine coast, a contemplation of man’s position in the natural world, and a reflection on the tensions between old and new ways of life.
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Wyeth (1882 - 1945), Island Funeral, 1939, egg tempera and oil on hardboard, 44 1/2 × 52 3/8”. Gift of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company in honor of the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art's 50th Anniversary, 2017
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William E. Phelps (1897-1967), photographer, N. C. Wyeth posing in front of Island Funeral for Henriette Wyeth's "Portrait of My Father," in N. C. Wyeth's Chadds Ford studio, ca. 1937, Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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Artist’s Palette
The palette remains unchanged from the last day it was in use by the artist. In October 1945, a car driven by N. C. Wyeth stalled on a railroad crossing not far from the artist’s home and studio. Wyeth and his passenger, his three-year-old grandson and namesake Newell Convers Wyeth II, were killed when an oncoming train failed to stop in time. Shock paralyzed the whole family, whose members grieved the sudden loss of both patriarch and its newest member. Daughter Carolyn Wyeth marked the tragic occasion by scrawling on the palette her father had been using the following words: “DO NOT USE / OCTOBER 18 – 1945 / Chadds Ford, Pa.”
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Film Collection
Andrew Wyeth inherited a love of film from his father. He particularly enjoyed the swashbuckling movies of Errol Flynn--Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940)—in which his father’s paintings and his own boyhood games seemed alive on the big screen. He loved war-themed movies, such as The Big Parade (1925), Wings (1927) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Imagery inspired by scenes from The Big Parade, which Wyeth claimed to have watched more than 500 times, eventually appeared in several of his major tempera paintings.
Wyeth purchased reels of his favorite films in 16 mm format and showed them in his studio to family and friends. His own fame enabled him to meet some of his favorite Hollywood actors and directors—Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Henry Fonda, Charlton Heston, and King Vidor.
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Dr. Syn Diorama
In 1981, Andrew Wyeth completed an extraordinary self-portrait in tempera – an exacting depiction of his own skeleton (drawn from an x-ray), dressed in an early 19th century naval officer’s coat and set, seemingly, in a ship’s cabin. The painting draws on a complex mix of Wyeth’s fascination with his osteology and mortality, a keen interest in the life of Admiral Nelson, and recollections of illustrations which both his father and he made for C. S. Forester’s Admiral Hornblower series.
Throughout his life, Andrew Wyeth delighted in miniature worlds populated with tiny figures. Shortly after Dr. Syn was painted, Betsy Wyeth commissioned Sheperd Paine (1946-2015), a noted modeler and military historian, to re-create the painting as a three-dimensional diorama.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Dr. Syn, 1981, tempera on panel. The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection © 2021 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Jamie Wyeth’s First Studio
In 1960, the Wyeths left this home and moved to the other side of Chadds Ford. Andrew Wyeth continued to paint in this building, however, and to support his son Jamie he offered the young artist studio space in what had been the family’s living room. For eight years, this was Jamie Wyeth’s Chadds Ford studio, where he created such notable paintings as Portrait of Shorty (1963), Draft Age (1965) and Portrait of John F. Kennedy (1967).
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Jamie Wyeth painting in his first studio. Photo courtesy of Christian Sanderson Museum, Chadds Ford, PA ©2016
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Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), Draft Age, 1965, oil on canvas, 36 x 30”. Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Randy L. Christofferson; Mr. And Mrs. George Strawbridge, Jr.; Mary Alice Dorrance Malone Foundation; Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Foundation of PA I, Inc.; The William Stamps Farish Fund; Mr. And Mrs. James W. Stewart, III; and MBNA America, 1999. © Jamie Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Military Miniatures Collection
In the mid-1920s, the young Andrew Wyeth found creative outlets in his collections of miniature figures—armored knights, Revolutionary war soldiers, and legions of WWI doughboys. His knights would lay siege to a homemade model castle; his WWI recruits hunkered outdoors in actual trenches as “bombs” exploded above. As a budding artist, he recorded these battles in his juvenile drawings and watercolors; the immersive experiences showed him how the powers of his imagination could provide rich artistic inspiration, a lesson he never forgot.
Throughout his life, Andrew Wyeth continued to enjoy and add to his miniature collections, displaying the pieces both in his studio and home.
Photograph by Rick Echelmeyer
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Wardrobe
Betsy Wyeth acquired this southeastern Pennsylvania wardrobe with the help of her neighbor and antiquarian Dr. Margaret Handy. The term “kas” derives from 17th century Dutch wardrobes of a similar form.
Positioned in the studio’s main room where it held costumes and Wyeth’s collection of WWI helmets, the kas occasionally appeared in his sketches and watercolors. Such objects fascinated the artist—with their known and secret histories, they stimulated his imagination and suggested countless stories to explore.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Wardrobe, 1985, watercolor on paper. Private Collection © 2021 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Fencing
The windowsill contains examples of Andrew Wyeth’s fencing equipment. The artist nurtured an interest in fencing that must have been rooted in his childhood games and his obsession with movies of swashbucklers such as Errol Flynn. As an adult, Wyeth acquired the slim epees of friendly competition and often engaged visitors right in the large room of the studio!
Photographer unknown, Andrew Wyeth fencing with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., ca.1970s. Gift of Mrs. Andrew Wyeth, 2010
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Watching The Big Parade
Andrew Wyeth was eight years old when he first saw The Big Parade, King Vidor’s epic tale of WWI. The film made an indelible impression on him and over the course of his life he rewatched it hundreds of times here in this studio, finding endless inspiration. The story spoke to his boyhood fascination with World War I and his complex, multilayered friendship with his Chadds Ford neighbor Karl Kuerner, a former German soldier. In scholar Henry Adams’s words, the film helped Wyeth “grasp how events from his own life connected with universal human themes.” Wyeth incorporated imagery reminiscent of scenes from The Big Parade in several of his most intimate and important tempera paintings, Christina’s World and Winter 1946.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Monologue
Andrew Wyeth often pictured his own studio, as seen in this portrait, Monologue. The title refers to what Andrew Wyeth described as the model’s talkative nature. Willard Snowden, the subject of this painting, became a model for Andrew Wyeth after knocking on the artist’s studio door looking for work in the early 1960s. Wyeth invited Snowden to live in the building for a time, doing handyman jobs and posing. Surrounded by emptiness in the large, barren room just outside Wyeth’s main studio, Snowden seems to be delivering a great speech to an unseen audience. Texture and light and shadow play key roles in this painting, with the light focused on the man’s expressive face and hands contrasted against the darkness of the room.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Monologue, 1965, dry brush watercolor on paper, 22 1/4 × 28 ½”. Anonymous gift, 1983 © 2021 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Family Living Room
Betsy Wyeth combined her flair for decorating and her love of antiques by integrating pieces such as this carved wooden lion’s head into the family’s living space. For years, this head, one of a pair which originally ornamented a circus wagon, watched over the Wyeth family’s daily activities and special celebrations, no doubt firing the imaginations of their two young sons and countless visitors. In its original state, the head was most likely painted or gilded.
Photograph of Nicholas and Jamie Wyeth, Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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Blind Pew
Until 1919, many of the paintings N. C. Wyeth created for book illustrations became the property of publishers, especially those created for the Scribner’s Classic series. In the mid-1960s, when there was still little interest in illustrations, Andrew and Betsy Wyeth began to buy work by N. C. Wyeth, concentrating on canvases from his most popular books such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Boy’s King Arthur.
One of their most important purchases was this memorable painting of the pirate Old Pew from Treasure Island, which hung in the family’s living room. Eventually the Wyeths acquired four more paintings from the classic tale.
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), Tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping and calling for his comrades, 1911, oil on canvas, 47 x 38”. Illustration for Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911). The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection
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Props for the Artist
N. C. Wyeth’s collection of studio props included firearms, swords, daggers and other weapons, Native American artifacts, clothing, agricultural implements and domestic ironware, as well as odd things found here and there. He used these objects for study and inspiration, adding authenticity to his images.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Guns as Props
As a young artist, N. C. Wyeth began to collect all kinds of props — objects whose accurate rendering in a painting lent the image a degree of authenticity. He added to his collection of firearms—both long rifles and handguns—throughout his career. Companies such as Winchester Arms sent him their latest models to depict in advertisements; fellow artists who went overseas during WWI shipped him examples abandoned in both Allied and German trenches. Occasionally he purchased groups of guns from dealers or received them as gifts. He would select from his collection whatever model was appropriate for a particular commission, such as the Civil War era rifles shown in The Bloody Angle, a picture of the Battle of Spotsylvania (1864).
Besides copying the profile of a firearm, Wyeth would heft the gun himself, feeling its weight and the exertion of the muscles needed to aim and fire it—all information necessary to convincingly depict its proper use. However, Wyeth himself was not a gunner and his studio props were rarely fired.
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), The Bloody Angle, 1912, oil on canvas, 46 1/4 × 33 ¼”. Gift of Charles S. Crompton, Jr., in memory of his wife, Milbrey Dean Crompton, 2014
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N. C. Wyeth’s Letters
In this desk, N. C. Wyeth kept the letters he received from his mother. After Wyeth left his boyhood home in Needham, Massachusetts, to study at the Howard Pyle School of Art in Wilmington, Delaware, he began to correspond regularly with his family, primarily with his mother, Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth. For almost 25 years, he described and reflected on his life and career, often including detailed information about current commissions, small sketches, and photographs. His mother saved his letters and he saved hers. He would often read them to rekindle his memories of boyhood and his Needham home. This remarkable collection of letters, both to and from Wyeth, constitutes a unique first-person account of his professional and personal life.
N. C. Wyeth. Letter (page 1 with drawing) to Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth, November 10, 1910. Ink on paper, 10 ½ x 8 inches. Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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Photographs
Andrew Wyeth decorated many of the walls of his studio with photographs, mostly of people he had known or admired. Wyeth realized that memory was a powerful trigger to his creativity, and he surrounded himself with photographs that could take him imaginatively backward and forward in time to places, events, and people. Here on the lower right is a large photo of his sister, Ann Wyeth McCoy, with her daughter, Anna B. McCoy.
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Family Kitchen
The kitchen was added to the building in the early 1950s to serve the needs of a family with two boys. After the Wyeths moved to another home in Chadds Ford in 1960, the space evolved gradually until it was primarily used as a storage room. Prior to the public opening of the Wyeth studio in 2012, curators decided to recreate the look of the kitchen by acquiring appliances similar to those originally used by the family. From 1940 to 1960, Andrew, Betsy, and their two sons lived in this building; in that same period, Andrew Wyeth created many of his most famous tempera paintings in the studio just two rooms away from the kitchen.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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A Studio is Built
In early March 1911, using money he had saved and with the prospect of the Treasure Island commission, N. C. Wyeth purchased eighteen acres of land on a rocky hillside just south of the village of Chadds Ford, PA. The building of a home and studio began immediately, with the studio sited further up the slope overlooking the gentle hills of the Brandywine River Valley. The studio, a white clapboard structure dominated both inside and out by a dramatic Palladian window, was completed in November 1911 and would serve Wyeth well as his principal workspace until his death, thirty-four years later.
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), The Studio, ca. 1913-1915, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 ¼”. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Frank E. Fowler
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Costume Collection
N. C. Wyeth believed one of his most important obligations to the next generation was to nurture young imaginations, so many of the costumes and props in his studio were available for his children to stage elaborate games. As a boy, Andrew Wyeth learned that make-believe could open doors to rich imaginative experiences; as an adult artist, he trusted his imagination to reveal unexplored creative channels. The artist preserved and augmented his father’s costume collection, and in the childhood spirit of impish fun sometimes wore pieces for parties and photographs. The costumes which appear in his paintings evoked personal memories and associations; they were meant to encourage the viewer’s own imagination.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Howard Pyle
The paintings on this wall are by the artist Howard Pyle. Andrew Wyeth grew up hearing his father’s stories about the mythic Pyle, one of the most prominent illustrators of the Golden Age. Pyle had been N. C. Wyeth’s teacher, mentor, and, finally, rival, as N. C.’s fame eclipsed Pyle’s. In later years, Andrew Wyeth perhaps conflated in his mind the formidable figures of Pyle and his father—both exacting mentors who held their students closely.
Howard Pyle (1853-1911), 'By Blood, Capt.' says Dyes, 'I Believe You've Killed the....’, 1894-1895, oil on board, 16 x 10 ½”. The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection
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Western Adventures
Not long after joining the Howard Pyle School of Art in 1902, Wyeth chose to focus much of his work on the Old West, a romanticized concept of an era that was rapidly disappearing. In 1904, he journeyed to Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona to study the lives of Indigenous peoples and settlers and to experience the colors and features of the vast and varied western landscapes.
Wyeth was no common tourist and threw himself into cowboy life. In Denver, he purchased a complete western “kit,” and then posed for this studio photograph wearing his buffalo hide chaps. Fully outfitted, he participated in a grueling round-up, visited a Navajo reservation, and drove a stage route for several weeks. This trip and two more short forays to Colorado and the stockyards of Chicago provided Wyeth with the visual imagery and resources he would access to become one of the country’s most acclaimed Western artists in the first decade of the 20th century.
Photographer unknown, N. C. Wyeth in Western Rig, 1904, Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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Book Collection
Studio libraries give insight into those artists and images which influence an artist’s thinking and creativity. Andrew Wyeth kept in his studio books on an astonishing variety of artists and movements he found of interest, from Albrecht Dürer to John Constable and from Winslow Homer to George Bellows. For example, monographs on Dürer reflect Wyeth’s interest in detailed drawing and the close examination of natural subjects; Dürer’s influence can be seen in Wyeth’s early penwork. In books on Winslow Homer, Wyeth found an artist equally drawn to the Maine coast.
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Local Landscape
For N. C. Wyeth, the magnificent sycamore trees of the Brandywine Valley admirably recreated the forests of 15th century England, as seen in this illustration from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson. The now massive tree outside his studio window would have been only a sapling at the time that this image was painted. Wyeth, steeped in the writings of Henry David Thoreau, would have enjoyed watching it grow. The artist was profoundly attuned to the natural world around him, and passages in some of his letters read as nature journals—lyrical reflections on the passing of the seasons, meteorological events, and the flora and fauna of his own eighteen acres in Chadds Ford. Like Thoreau, Wyeth never traveled abroad; both men found abundant inspiration in their immediate surroundings for their respective art.
N. C. Wyeth (1882 - 1945), And Lawless, keeping half a step in front of his companion and holding his head forward like a hunting-dog upon the scent, . . . studied out their path, 1916, oil on canvas, 40 × 32”. The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection
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Mirror
This large full length, adjustable mirror, known as a cheval glass, was an important piece of Andrew Wyeth’s studio furniture. Positioned behind his easel, the mirror allowed him to study his current painting in reverse. From a different perspective, he could assess and adjust design, composition, and color juxtapositions.
Photograph by Carlos Alejandro
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Masonite Panels
When working with egg tempera, Andrew Wyeth painted on hardboard panels instead of canvas or paper. Initially, he procured his panels from F. Weber Company, a major supplier of art material located in Philadelphia. Sold under the brand name “Renaissance Panels,” the supports were made of pressed wood fiber boards (like Masonite), one side of which was coated in multiple layers of gesso to yield an exceptionally smooth surface. The panels, sealed between the gesso and a coat of brick red paint on the reverse, were extremely stable, an excellent base for the tempera medium.
By the mid-1960s, when F. Weber ceased production of the Renaissance Panels, Wyeth and fellow tempera painter George A. Weymouth bought many remaining panels. Later, Wyeth found a craftsperson who supplied him with ready-to-use gessoed panels. Occasionally, Wyeth used home-made panels, but the layering and sanding of the gesso ground is a time-consuming, meticulous process.
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Dining Room
Most of the rooms in the Andrew Wyeth studio have had multiple uses since 1925, when the late 19th century schoolhouse was first converted by N. C. Wyeth into a studio for his daughter Henriette. This room served as both dining room and kitchen for Henriette when she and her family lived here in the late 1930s. In the fall of 1940, the building became the family home of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth. The unusual sconces, added when Betsy Wyeth transformed the space into a dining room in the mid-1950s, reflect Mrs. Wyeth’s flair for decorating.
Wyeth Family Christmas Dinner, early 1950s. Photo courtesy of Christian Sanderson Museum, Chadds Ford, PA ©2016
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Latest Work
While Andrew Wyeth welcomed very few guests into his actual studio, part of his artistic process involved an informal showing of his work in the kitchen. Finished work was hung over the fireplace to prompt discussion with family, local friends, and visitors. Andrew considered his wife, Betsy, his severest and most astute critic, but other family members (many of them artists themselves) and artists such as fellow tempera painter George A. Weymouth would often drop by for conversation focused on Wyeth’s newest watercolor or tempera painting.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Monday Morning, 1955, tempera on panel. The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection © 2021 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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N. C. Wyeth Studio
In 1911, with the proceeds from his illustrations for Treasure Island, the artist N. C. Wyeth purchased 18 acres of land on Rocky Hill in the village of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Possessed of "the most glorious sight in the township," Wyeth built his home and studio overlooking the valley. Here he set down roots which have nourished a family of extraordinary creativity for more than a century. The Brandywine River Museum of Art owns and maintains the land and buildings which retain much of their original character. The main studio, with its spectacular Palladian-style north window, still contains many of the props that were essential to the work of an illustrator. A full-size mural painting, displayed in a soaring 1923 addition, helps tell the story of Wyeth’s career. The N. C. Wyeth House and Studio is a National Historic Landmark and a member of the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Edward J. S. Seal (American, 1896-1955), photographer, N. C. Wyeth, Chadds Ford, ca. 1938. Courtesy of the Chadds Ford Historical Society
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Peter Hurd
The photographs in this framed collage are of Peter Hurd, a young artist from New Mexico who came to Chadds Ford in 1923 seeking guidance from N. C. Wyeth on a career in illustration. Wyeth agreed to advise Hurd, who quickly became a regular visitor and then suitor and eventual husband of Wyeth’s eldest daughter, Henriette. Andrew Wyeth, six years old when Hurd first appeared, was captivated by the dashing New Mexican’s western persona. An “elder brother” relationship later progressed to one of tutor-pupil as Hurd introduced Wyeth to the technique of tempera painting. Finally, the two men—brothers-in-law—enjoyed a friendship that lasted until Hurd’s death in 1984.
Photographer unknown, Peter Hurd on the ranch, ca. 1960s-1970s, Gift of Mrs. Andrew Wyeth, 2010
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Antiques Collector
When East Aurora, New York native Betsy James Wyeth settled in Chadds Ford after her marriage, she developed a keen interest in the material culture of southeastern Pennsylvania. She took an active role in the formation of the Chadds Ford Historical Society and in the preservation of the Society’s John Chads House, and also directed the restoration of several 18th century buildings in the area. Through years of learning and looking, she assembled an extensive collection of early Pennsylvania furniture, such as this table and chairs, and decorative arts objects like the carved wooden goose. Mrs. Wyeth integrated these objects into her home and the family’s daily life.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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The Mural Studio
After WWI, Wyeth decided to diversify his career and solicit commissions for architectural murals. Mural commissions were plentiful and lucrative, and, in a misguided but prevalent hierarchy, mural painting was perceived as a more worthy art form than illustration work. In order to create such large-scale murals, Wyeth extended his original studio. This new studio is a cavernous space which accommodated canvases of great height and width. The northwestern wall is mostly window, to provide the natural light Wyeth preferred while painting. From the southwest wall of the main studio room, the artist had almost 50 feet of space through which to view these canvases, simulating sight lines in the buildings for which they were destined.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Western Gear
Arriving in Denver in 1904, Wyeth purchased this Hermann Heiser saddle as part of his tack, along with reins, bridle and bit, stirrups, and blanket. He spent days in this saddle working on a round-up and visited many rodeo competitions. The great Western illustrators of the late 19th and early 20th century strove to project a degree of authenticity in their paintings, often traveling through the West, dressing in western clothing and sampling traditional western occupations to gain first-hand experience.
Back east in his studio, atop a makeshift wooden “horse,” the saddle and other tack helped him pose models to accurately depict the Old West in the stories and articles he illustrated.
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Photographer unknown, N. C. Wyeth near Two Gray Hills, NM, 1904, Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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Saturday Evening Post, February 21, 1903. The Walter & Leonore Annenberg Research Center
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ANDREW WYETH STUDIO
Andrew Wyeth, one of America’s best-known 20th-century artists, painted many of his most important works of art in his Chadds Ford studio. The studio, a repurposed schoolhouse originally built in 1875, served as the artist’s principal Pennsylvania workplace from 1940 to 2008. Thousands of paintings and drawings were created there, inspired by the people, architecture and landscapes of Chadds Ford. The studio still houses the furnishings, library and collections acquired by the artist, as well as examples of the art materials he used throughout his career.
The Andrew Wyeth Studio is a National Historic Landmark and a member site of the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Given to the Brandywine River Museum of Art by the artist’s wife, Betsy James Wyeth, the studio provides visitors with a unique opportunity to experience this very personal space.
Photograph by Carlos Alejandro
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The Artist’s Materials
One of Andrew Wyeth’s preferred mediums for painting was watercolor and one of his favorite subjects was the landscape within a two-mile radius of his studio in Chadds Ford. Whether crossing a field of corn shocks or sitting on his car hood along a little used cart track, Wyeth would find inspiration in the slenderest blades of grass, a tangle of bare branches or a view of the fields and gentle hills that comprise the Brandywine Valley. Using an easily transportable watercolor box and a block of paper, he worked within the plein air tradition—painting outdoors to capture immediate impressions of the natural world.
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Photo of watercolor blocks; Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), My Father’s Studio, 1940, watercolor on paper. The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection © 2021 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Mural
In 1932, N. C. Wyeth accepted a commission from the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company for a mural destined for a new building on Independence Square in Philadelphia. The scene depicts William Penn, who held a royal land grant, turning his back on a dark and menacing London to face the promise of the new world. Wyeth was careful with his history within the fanciful composition and wrote a pamphlet for Penn Mutual naming the figures he portrayed—Penn, Charles II, his brother, James, Duke of York, and the Quaker leader George Fox. Tension between Wyeth’s modernist treatment of the land and clouds and the more traditional approach to the historical figures creates the composition’s visual interest.
Penn Mutual’s generous donation of the mural to the Brandywine River Museum of Art in 1997 enables visitors to the studio to experience the impact of such a large-scale canvas within the artist’s working space.
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), William Penn, Man of Vision · Courage · Action, 1933, oil on canvas, 168 × 132 ¼”. Gift of the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, 1997
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Frame
By the late 1920s, N. C. Wyeth was sending his private paintings to annual exhibitions in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Wilmington. He needed high quality, decorative frames for these occasions and would purchase them from New York studios or independent carvers. He often reused the frames which he had made in standard sizes.
Many of the frames on this wall were constructed for N. C. Wyeth by the Wilmington frame maker Frank A. Coll (1885-1969). The most elaborate example of this collaboration is an overmantel-style frame designed by Wyeth and carved and gilded by Coll for a pirate picture Wyeth painted for the Miami Beach developer Carl G. Fisher. An archival photo shows the newly framed painting, “the richest and most sumptuous piece of art and applied art” Wyeth thought ever done in his studio.
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Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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The Walter & Leonore Annenberg Research Center, Brandywine River Museum of Art
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Birchbark Canoe
Throughout his career, Wyeth owned a number of birchbark canoes, no doubt interested in their shape, material, and history. Birchbark canoes appear in many of his early western pictures, but he probably didn’t need a model to actually paint one. He appreciated them as tangible links to Indigenous peoples and bygone eras.
Wyeth purchased this canoe from a dealer in Rockland, Maine, in 1937 and had it shipped by rail to Chadds Ford, where he hung it from the rafters in the main studio. The canoe has been recently conserved and research suggests that this canoe was built by the Indigenous Penobscot tribe, part of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which translates to "People of the Dawn." Birchbark canoes were vital to the Wabanaki and were used to navigate the waterways of what is now Maine for thousands of years. The canoe is over 18 feet long and made of birchbark with wooden narrow ribs in the hull, thwarts that run across the width of the canoe, and wooden pegs instead of nails, an indicator that the canoe was built in the early 19th century. It is one of the oldest known birchbark canoes still in existence due to the fragile nature of the material.
Photograph by Daniel Jackson
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Carolyn Wyeth’s Studio
Beyond this wall, N. C. Wyeth added a third studio to his complex on the hill in 1931—a small space for the exclusive use of his daughter Carolyn. Many of her paintings depict views from her studio windows, the landscape around her studio, or objects inside. After her father’s death, Carolyn would often paint in his studio, and beginning in the late 1940s she gave art lessons there to several decades of pupils, including her nephew, Jamie Wyeth. In the 1970s, she loaned her small studio, with its door on the rear side facing the hill, to her brother Andrew when he sought discreet places in which to paint the model Helga Testorf.
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Sanborn Studio, photographer, Carolyn Wyeth, ca. 1935, Wyeth Family Archives, Chadds Ford, PA
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Carolyn Wyeth (1909-1994), N. C. Wyeth's Barn, 1974, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 × 31 ½”. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Wyeth, 1985
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Sketches on the floor
Reproductions of the preliminary work Wyeth did for his major tempera paintings are scattered around the studio to give visitors insight into the artist’s complex artistic process. He used watercolor, ink, and pencil to explore every aspect of his initial concept, from rough, almost abstract composition sketches to detailed studies of the principal figures. Once Wyeth had resolved particular passages, the preliminary work was no longer important to him; several of the early watercolors for Raccoon, for example, were tossed on the floor and were “signed” with pawprints of the Wyeth dogs!
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Jack in the Barrel (Study for Raccoon), 1958, watercolor on paper, 14 1/8 × 21 5/8”. Gift of E. B. Leisenring, Jr., and Julia Bissell Leisenring, 2002 © 2021 Andrew Wyeth / Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Raccoon
While Wyeth often painted outdoors using watercolor, he produced his major tempera paintings in the studio. Here a sturdy easel held the large fiber board panels; on the walls around him, Wyeth posted the sketches and studies relevant to the composition. With eggs and pigments nearby, the process of mixing and applying layers of tempera proceeded, often over the course of months.
In 1957, Wyeth visited an early 18th century gristmill in Chadds Ford where he saw the scene he captured in Raccoon. Wyeth tried to purchase the hound dog, but the owner refused and later destroyed the dog. Even without knowing the personal story, the viewer is mesmerized by the figure of the dog, the dramatic lighting, and the exquisite rendering of the colors and textures of the stone and wood structure. In 1958, the Wyeths purchased the gristmill site and began to convert it into a residence.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Raccoon, 1958, tempera on panel, 48 1/8 × 48 1/8”. Acquisition in memory of Nancy Hanks made possible by David Rockefeller, Laurance S. Rockefeller, Mimi Haskell, and The Pew Memorial Trust, 1983 © 2021 Andrew Wyeth / Artists Rights Society (ARS)
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Egg Tempera
Andrew Wyeth’s tempera medium consisted of dry pigments which he mixed with egg yolk and thinned with distilled water. Dry pigments included ochres, iron oxides, lapis, siennas, and umbers, both natural and synthetic materials ground into fine powders. Wyeth sourced his pigments from commercial suppliers, but also painted with pigments sent to him by other artists. He particularly treasured pigments from the rock and earth of New Mexico periodically sent to him by his brother-in-law, Peter Hurd.
Andrew Wyeth purchased the jarred pigments which now sit along the windowsill in the studio from Zecchi’s, a centuries-old colorist in Florence, Italy.
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Moveable stairs
In 1923, N. C. Wyeth accepted a commission from the First National Bank of Boston to paint four large-scale murals depicting various eras in the history of shipping and a colossal map of the world. The murals measured approximately 15 x 11 feet, a canvas size that took up most of the far wall of his mural studio. Wyeth ordered a set of moveable stairs that allowed him easy access to the top of such enormous canvases.
Chester H. Thomas, photographer. N. C. Wyeth Working on the First National Bank of Boston Mural, ca. 1924. Brandywine River Museum of Art, The Walter & Leonore Annenberg Research Center, Gift of Susan Wooton McKinley.
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Artist’s Tools
Andrew Wyeth used a metal palette with small cups for painting with egg tempera. Tempera painting is a centuries old technique using a medium of ground pigment and egg yolk, thinned with water. Unlike oil pigments which take time to dry, tempera dries relatively quickly, forcing the artist to continually mix and use small amounts of paint.
Andrew Wyeth’s introduction to tempera painting came in 1936 from his brother-in-law, Peter Hurd, who taught both Andrew and N. C. Wyeth the technique. The medium appealed to Wyeth and he would become a master of tempera, using it for his most vital work.
Photograph by Jacques-Jean Tiziou
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Betsy James Wyeth
From the beginning of their married life, Betsy James Wyeth played two crucial roles in Andrew Wyeth’s career. She was his muse, and he depicted her in many paintings, either explicitly or implied by objects and places associated with her. She carefully curated the spaces of his homelife to reflect an aesthetic he found inspirational. “She’s made me into a painter that I would not have been otherwise,” Andrew Wyeth acknowledged. “She made me see more clearly what I wanted.”
More prosaically but no less importantly, Betsy Wyeth acted as the artist’s business manager, allowing her husband the luxury of focusing exclusively on his art. She named with wit and insight most of his work, published the first book on him, and kept the extensive records and archives that form the basis of the Andrew Wyeth catalogue raisonné.
Burk Uzzle (b. 1938), Photographer, Betsy Wyeth, ca. 1965, Published in Life Magazine, May 14, 1965, p. 112. © Burk Uzzle