N.C. Wyeth

Newell Convers Wyeth was born October 22, 1882, in Needham, Massachusetts. With his mother’s encouragement, N.C. Wyeth attended several art schools – Mechanics Arts School in Boston, Massachusetts Normal Arts School, and the Eric Pape School of Art in Boston before being accepted to Howard Pyle’s School of Illustration in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1902. After only one and a half years of Pyle’s instruction, Wyeth was appearing in national magazines such as Collier’s, Harper’s, Scribner’s, and others. His first published illustration of a bronco and rider appeared in February 1903 on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.
With funding from publishers, in September 1904, Wyeth ventured west for the first time to explore and absorb the life of the American frontier. He quickly became a successful and busy illustrator. After his second trip west, Wyeth returned to Wilmington and married Carolyn Bockius on April 16, 1906. With marriage, his attention turned to the pastoral Chadds Ford countryside, a few miles from Wilmington in the heart of the Brandywine River Valley. There he purchased a house and raised his family. The rolling hills, planted fields, gentle brooks, and woodlands captivated his imagination. In 1911, Wyeth began work on his first Scribner’s Classic, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. This remarkable work launched a relationship between publisher and painter that continued until the completion of Majorie Kinnan Rawling’s The Yearling in 1939. He was enormously successful in his lifetime as a master illustrator but yearned for recognition in the world of “fine art,” where he perceived that art achieved its highest ideals of truth and beauty. He frequently tried to separate himself from the time and pressures of illustration in order to concentrate on his personal painting, but he continued accepting assignments, even up to his tragic accidental death in 1945.

Submitted by Somerville Manning Gallery