Wyeth is an iconic name in American painting not just for Andrew, one of America’s foremost painters, whose Christina’s World is one of the most recognized images in American art. There was also Andrew’s father, N.C. Wyeth, a leading illustrator-painter of pirates, Pilgrims, and Wild West cowboys and Indians whose work lent the visual magic to books like Treasure Island and The Last of the Mohicans. And there is Andrew’s accomplished son, Jamie, who has painted everything from President John F. Kennedy to the farm animals of the rustic landscapes he calls home.
A connection to the land runs through the work of all three generations — a connection profoundly informed by their shared attachment to a particular patch in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, in the Brandywine Valley. In history, the countryside there is known as the site where Gen. George Washington’s troops fought the Battle of Brandywine during the Revolutionary War. In art, it became known as Wyeth country after N.C. bought 18 acres on Rocky Hill in 1911 with the proceeds from his illustrations for Treasure Island and built a home and studio overlooking the valley. There he set down roots and painted his surroundings while mentoring son Andrew, who would in turn do the same with son Jamie.
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The Denver Art Museum explores part of that artistic lineage in Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio, with more than 100 works executed in a variety of media and displayed in the context of father’s and son’s autobiographies, studio practices, and mental processes. Although N.C. isn’t the focus of the exhibition, you nonetheless sense in the artworks the DNA of the patriarch who passed along the Wyeth talent for rendering views of a rural America that are at once both realistic and imaginative.
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Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio is on view November 8, 2015 – February 7, 2016, at the Denver Art Museum. Through November 15, Brandywine River Museum of Art — significant for its holdings of the Wyeth family artists — features Things Beyond Resemblance, color photographs by James Welling inspired by Andrew Wyeth.
From the November/December 2015 issue.
