(Rockland, ME) On Saturday, May 21, the Farnsworth Art Museum will open an exhibition of paintings by N.C. Wyeth entitled N.C. Wyeth: Painter. This exhibition will be on display at the museum’s Wyeth Center, on the corner of Union and Grace Streets in Rockland through December 31, 2016.
Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945) is best known as one of America’s foremost book and magazine illustrators of his era. Born and raised in Needham, Massachusetts, N.C. Wyeth learned drafting at the Mechanics School and then studied at the Massachusetts Normal School (now Massachusetts College of Art and Design). He was advised by one of his teachers to become an illustrator, and he soon followed two of his student friends to study illustration in 1902 under the renowned American illustrator Howard Pyle in Wilmington, Delaware. In February 1903, Wyeth got his first commission, from Saturday Evening Post. This was the beginning of a long and successful career in which he illustrated more than a hundred books, among them many popular novels for Scribner’s, including Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, Robinson Crusoe, and Rip Van Winkle.
His fame and success as an illustrator notwithstanding, Wyeth also wanted to be known as a painter, an artist whose skills went beyond the requirements of adhering to the narratives for which his illustrations were commissioned. Over the course of his career, in fact, he did more than 200 landscapes, 30 still lifes, and 60 portraits and other private subjects. This exhibition focuses on some of his more ambitious independent landscape and seascape paintings, ranging in date from 1917 to 1941. These works were done in and around his two homes, his primary residence in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and a summer home in Port Clyde, Maine.
N.C. Wyeth, Portrait of a Young Artist, 1936, oil on canvas, 32 x 40 1/4 inches, museum purchase, 1963.1285
N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945) The Harbor Herring gut, 1925
Oil on canvas
43 x 48 1/8 inches
Private Collection
N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945) My Grandfather’s House, c. 1929 Oil on canvas
42 1/8 x 48 inches
Private Collection
N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945)
Portrait of Ann Reading, c. 1930 Oil on canvas
48 1⁄4 x 52 3/16 inches
Private Collection
N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945)
Fisherman’s Family, c. 1933/1934
Oil on canvas 591⁄4 x 71 inches
Private Collection
N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945) Herring!, c. 1935
Oil on canvas
48 1/8 x 52 1/8 inches
Private Collection
N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945) Ridge Church, 1936
Oil on canvas
36 x 40 1/8 inches
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882-1945)
Bright and Fair - Eight Bells, 1936 Oil on canvas
42 3/8 x 52 1/4 inches
Museum Purchase, 1989.13
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882-1945)
Maine Headland, Black Head, Monhegan Island, c. 1936-1938
Oil on canvas
48 1/4 x 52 1/4 inches
Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997.3.59
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882-1945)
The Morris House, Port Clyde, c. 1937 Oil on canvas
34 x 52 x 7/8 inches
Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997.3.60
N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945)
Black Spruce Ledge (Time and Tide), 1941 Oil and egg tempera on hardboard
45 x 52 inches
Private Collection