N. C. Wyeth, Sword Drawn

Celebrating cultural highlights
of 1913...
Wyeth-blogging, essay 6 on
N.C. Wyeth's Illustrations
for Kidnapped

N. C. Wyeth 

(1882-1945)

The Siege of the Round-House, It came all of a sudden when it did, with a rush of feet and a roar, and then a shout from Alan, 1913
Illustration for Robert Louis Stevenson,
Kidnapped; Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913)
Brandywine River Museum
Bequest of Mrs.
Russell G. Colt, 1986

The Brandywine River Museum (Chadds Ford, PA) is the last place you’d expect to find a nude descending the staircase. As I suggested in an earlier entry on N. C. Wyeth, the museum’s central spiral staircase is more of a place where “Dick and Joanna might descend to the dungeon, crossbow at the ready.” A cubist nude would be wildly out of place clattering down these steps. The Brandywine River Museum is a space for Wyeths and Howard Pyles, not Duchamps.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude
Descending a Staircase
(No. 2) (1912)
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Marcel Duchamp hit big in America in 1913, one hundred years ago. His famous nude descended a staircase at the International Exhibition of Modern Art, aka the Armory Show of 1913, and that was the signal for the modern art party to begin. N. C. Wyeth wasn’t there. While the Armory Show was drawing crowds, Wyeth was in Boston attending a flower show.

It’s simplistic to divide American art into pre-Armory Show and post-Armory Show, but there’s some justification for it. In the years immediately following the Armory Show, modern art took hold in the United States. Even though many mainstream reviewers mocked the works of Matisse, Picasso, and, above all, Marcel Duchamp, young artists saw new possibilities. The new fine art was going to be abstract; realistic narrative art like Wyeth’s was old-fashioned—good enough for magazine covers.

It’s difficult to imagine that Wyeth was unaware of Duchamp’s highly controversial Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), the most scandalous of the Armory Show paintings. It was pilloried in print and mocked in cartoons. Even if he didn’t see reproductions of the work itself, he must have seen caricatures that caught its central concern—capturing movement over time. Duchamp took the fascinating stop-motion photographic studies pioneered by Eadweard Muybridge in the late 19th century and rendered his interpretation in a Modernist style, showing the influence of emerging European art movements like Cubism and Futurism.

Eadweard Muybridge, Woman Walking Downstairs.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

Movement depicted over time…  A wildly iconoclastic thinker, Duchamp toyed with the concept, converting photographic truth into an utterly original Modernist statement. It’s hard to imagine anything further from Wyeth.  Except…

Detail of Wyeth's
The Siege of the
Roundhouse.

What was Wyeth thinking when he painted that sword slashing downward through the air, with its motion suggested by a rapid-fire succession of pale brush strokes? It’s not Wyeth’s usual precision snapshot approach—this 1913 painting shows movement depicted over time, Wyeth-style. He gives us a stop-motion sword movement, while still honing to his realistic presentation in all other regards. In the year that Duchamp offered up his famed nude in descent, Wyeth presented a sword in descent—his subtle contribution to a trendy art world subject.

The Duchamp is a smart, edgy piece. I like it.

But I love the Wyeth.

Detail of N. C. Wyeth's
The Siege of the Round-House (1913).
Brandywine River Museum

Reference Sources

N. C. Wyeth: A Biography by David Michaelis

N. C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations, and Murals by Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr.
The Brandywine Tradition by Henry C. Pitz
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art

Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life by Richard Meryman

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2013 Lee Price

N. C. Wyeth's Moving Pictures

Celebrating cultural highlights
of 1913...
Wyeth-blogging, essay 5 on
N.C. Wyeth's Illustrations 
for Kidnapped

N. C. Wyeth 
(1882-1945)

At the Cards in Cluny’s Cage, 1913
Illustration for Robert Louis Stevenson,
Kidnapped; Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913)
Brandywine River Museum
Bequest of
Mrs. Russell G. Colt, 1986

There’s something very cinematic about the work of N. C. Wyeth.

No, reverse that: There’s something very Wyeth-ian about Hollywood movies. Something Howard Pyle-ian, too, for that matter.

Master illustrators like Howard Pyle and his students—with N. C. Wyeth very notable among them—were extraordinarily popular at the turn-of-the-century. Before the film industry emerged in the first decade of the 20th century, magazines and books were the most easily accessible medium for escapism in the United States. And it’s probably inevitable that the images on these magazines and books became etched into the minds of America’s early filmmakers. They learned from this artwork. The incipient filmmakers learned how to frame action; they learned the art of making even relatively unexciting incidents appear visually compelling.

At the Cards in Cluny's Cage
by N. C. Wyeth.

When painting a scene like At the Cards in Cluny’s Cage, N. C. Wyeth would work much like a film director. He posed models, dressed them in period costumes, carefully framed the action, and designed the lighting to heighten the mood and convey the story. A knowledge of theater naturally played into this—with Wyeth’s closet of costumes being particularly theatrical in nature. But Wyeth was much more like a film director than a theater director because so much of the final effect was achieved by his choices of how to position elements within the frame. There’s little of the proscenium stage in Wyeth’s art.

While gambling may be mentally exciting, it’s not visually compelling. In At the Cards in Cluny’s Cage,  the swashbuckling rebel Alan Breck is gambling at cards and losing all the money of our hero, David Balfour, in the process. Bank notes lie crumpled on the floor in foreground, painted without detail but conspicuously visible from this low perspective.

John Barrymore in Don Juan (1926).

N. C. Wyeth’s use of lighting for this painting is a lesson for budding filmmakers in how to enliven a static scene. The characters are placed around a diagonal stream of bright light that precisely illuminates the details that Wyeth wants to emphasize and casts deep shadows where he wants mystery. Unlike a film director, the painter must capture all the story details in a single image. Everything counts.

An early filmmaker like Douglas Fairbanks (who began building widespread popularity as an actor-producer in 1916, just three years after Wyeth’s illustrated Kidnapped was published) was certainly paying attention. A decade later, when he was at the peak of his Hollywood success, Fairbanks implored N. C. Wyeth to come to Hollywood to work on his latest swashbuckler The Black Pirate (1926). While Wyeth chose not to go, he wasn’t really needed. The Wyeth influence was already pervasive in the art of filmmaking, and The Black Pirate was just one of many classic Hollywood movies that worked so well partly because it looked like an N. C. Wyeth painting in motion.

An atmospheric gathering of pirates from
The Black Pirate (1926).

Reference Sources

N. C. Wyeth: A Biography by David Michaelis

N. C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations, and Murals by Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr.
The Brandywine Tradition by Henry C. Pitz
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art

Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life by Richard Meryman

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2013 Lee Price

N. C. Wyeth Inspects the Proof

Celebrating cultural highlights
of 1913...
Wyeth-blogging, essay 4 on
N.C. Wyeth's illustrations 
for Kidnapped

N. C. Wyeth 
(1882-1945)

Two Pipers in Balquhidder (All night long the brose was going and the pipes changing hands), 1913
Illustration for Robert Louis Stevenson,  Kidnapped; Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913)
Brandywine River Museum
Bequest of
Mrs. Russell G. Colt, 1986

Imagine the frustration.

N. C. Wyeth preferred to paint on a large canvas, his standard being nearly four feet high by three feet across. He filled these spaces with telling detail and invention. He worked from a wide color palette, often with great subtlety, sometimes heavily plastering on the oils and at other times so thinly applying them that you could easily see the texture of the canvas.

And then the book publisher reduced the image by 98% (that’s 98%!!!) to create an image just 6 ½ inches high by 5 ¼ inches wide. Details would disappear into shadows. Carefully chosen colors could be altogether altered. “Miserable smudges,” Wyeth called the reproductions of his work published in Mary Johnston’s The Long Roll in 1910.

But, for better or worse, illustration was Wyeth’s chosen career, so he persevered. And thanks largely to the vision of Art Editor Joseph Chapin at Scribners (Wyeth’s main publisher), the art of illustration reproduction began to aspire to a level worthy of the art practiced by the illustrators. The Scribner’s Illustrated Classics series that began with Treasure Island in 1911 set a dramatically higher standard for the industry. Wyeth was delighted.

The quality of the Kidnapped book illustrations in 1913 easily matched that of the Treasure Island triumph. Of course, Wyeth remained acutely aware that the situation remained far from perfect, but he also knew these were the best illustrated books available on the mass market of his day.

Scribners used a sophisticated four-color process. Each painting was photographed through four different filters, with each filter separating out all but one of the primary colors. Wyeth was fully involved in the proofing process, often traveling up to New York City to meet with Chapin and the printers, always striving for a faithful reproduction of the carefully composed art on his canvases.

Wyeth's Two Pipers in Balquhidder as
reproduced in a Scribners Illustrated Classic.
Image source:  The Golden Age

When I last visited the Brandywine River Museum in January 2013, I was delighted to spend time with their small but very informative exhibit of Kidnapped material, including artist proofs and first editions of the book. Even though I entirely lack the acute trained artist’s eye of a Wyeth, I could easily see the unfortunate changes wrought by the photomechanical reproduction process.

Glancing back and forth, from the canvas of Two Pipers in Balquhidder to the artist’s proof to the book reproduction, I noted the loss of detail in the background hearth. The glowing reds and yellows of the painting were muted in the proof and the book illustration, resulting in an increase of muddied browns and grays.

Printed on a glossy specialty paper, the book illustrations are remarkably well preserved. They look superb. It’s only when you compare the illustrations to the paintings on the wall (a luxury that it’s hard to achieve outside of the Brandywine River Museum!) that you realize the inevitable diminution of his vision that Wyeth had to accept.

This was state-of-the-art color reproduction in 1913 and for that Wyeth had to be grateful.

But imagine the endless compromises involved in signing off on each proof, reluctantly agreeing that each reproduction was good enough.

Imagine the frustration.

On left:  Image of N. C. Wyeth's original painting of
Two Pipers in Balquhidder.  On right:  Image of the book illustration.
Image of the Wyeth painting courtesy of Brandywine River Museum.

Reference Sources

N. C. Wyeth: A Biography by David Michaelis

N. C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations, and Murals by Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr.
The Brandywine Tradition by Henry C. Pitz
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art

Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life by Richard Meryman

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

My low-resolution copies of the N.C. Wyeth book illustrations are via the beautiful high-resolution scans at The Golden Age, one of my favorite art blogs on the internet.

© 2013 Lee Price

Shipwrecks in Wyeth and Homer

Celebrating cultural highlights
of 1913...
Wyeth-blogging, essay 3 on
N.C. Wyeth's Illustrations 
for Kidnapped

N. C. Wyeth 
(1882-1945)

The Wreck of the “Covenant” (It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see how far I had traveled from the brig), 1913
Illustration for Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped; Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913)
Brandywine River Museum
Bequest of
Mrs. Russell G. Colt

Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped allowed N. C. Wyeth to indulge in a full-scale shipwreck painting—the result, The Wreck of the “Covenant”, is simultaneously one of the most dramatic and poetic of his works. In the painting, the young hero David Balfour is in the foreground, clinging to a yardarm as he gazes back at the ship foundering on a reef. But though the action is intense, the mood is almost meditative, dominated by the dark green billows of the ocean and the night sky above.

Looking at N. C. Wyeth’s The Wreck of the “Covenant” on the third floor of the Brandywine River Museum (Chadds Ford, PA), I was reminded of an exhibit that I attended last fall at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “Shipwreck!” focused on the back story of an American masterpiece, Winslow Homer’s The Life Line, by looking at the roots of this great painting in the subgenre of shipwreck paintings that flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries. When they painted their shipwreck dramas, Homer and Wyeth were working in a very established tradition. It was a type of painting that allowed the artist to depict nature at its most ferocious, while embellishing the scene with narrative details of heroism or tragedy.

Winslow Homer, The Life Line (1884), Oil on canvas,
28 5/8 x 44 3/4 inches.
Philadelphia Museum of Art.

N. C. Wyeth wanted a career like Winslow Homer’s. Their professional lives only overlapped for a brief time. Homer made the leap from being considered a very talented illustrator to a fine artist in the 1880s (with The Life Line significantly contributing to his growing reputation) and then continued to develop his artistry through the last decades of his life. As Homer’s career drew to a close in the first years of the 20th century, young N. C. Wyeth was busy launching his career as an illustrator. Wyeth was well aware of Homer, very respectful of his work, and intent on duplicating Homer’s success in moving from well-paid illustration work to acclaim as a fine artist.

A comparison of the two paintings, Homer’s The Life Line and Wyeth’s The Wreck of the “Covenant”, highlights the strengths of both. In depicting a disaster at sea, both Homer and Wyeth employ similar visual elements but to largely different effects. Each of the artists places their central character (or two characters with Homer) in the foreground, clearly the main focus for the viewer. The face of the hero figure is obscured in both, by a scarf in Homer and by a shadow in Wyeth. The artists offset these lead figures with a bright mist from the crashing of waves behind them. The shipwrecks are a secondary concern, relegated to the corners, only minimally suggested in Homer’s painting.

Detail of N. C. Wyeth's The Wreck of the "Covenant".
Courtesy of Brandywine River Museum.

Homer’s painting is packed with meaning, very well explicated in the “Shipwreck!” exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But Homer’s concerns about man and nature, modern technology, and even gender relations are not those of Wyeth in The Wreck of the “Covenant”. Wyeth’s shipwreck scene has an altogether different feel, with young David Balfour looking almost acceptant of his position—passively taking in the sinking of the ship where he had been shanghaied. The ship looks ghostly with the white sails extending up into the heavens, perhaps intentionally suggesting the deaths of many of the men on board. The sky appears almost perversely clear with stars shining, wonderfully echoed by a single poetic red speck of light near the ship’s bow.

I don’t think visitors to the Philadelphia Museum of Art were particularly surprised that Homer’s The Life Line has layers of meaning. His reputation as a fine artist is well established. But one hundred years later, people still tend to think of Wyeth as simply a very good illustrator of boys’ adventure novels.

Now for just a minute forget the Robert Louis Stevenson book and take a fresh look at The Wreck of the “Covenant”. The bottom and the top third of the painting are dark scenes of calm, with the fury of nature sandwiched in the middle. There are universal implications here as well. Consider it as metaphoric—N. C. Wyeth’s vision of one man alone in a universe both beautiful and threatening.

Detail of N. C. Wyeth's The Wreck of the "Covenant".
Courtesy of Brandywine River Museum.

Reference Sources

N. C. Wyeth: A Biography by David Michaelis

N. C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations, and Murals by Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr.
The Brandywine Tradition by Henry C. Pitz
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art

Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life by Richard Meryman

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2013 Lee Price

Howard Pyle as Action Figure

Celebrating cultural highlights
of 1913...
Wyeth-blogging, essay 2 on
N.C. Wyeth's Illustrations 
for Kidnapped

Our two heroes in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped: Alan Breck on the left and David Balfour on the right.

N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945)
Kidnapped, cover illustration, 1913
Illustration for Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped; Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913)
Brandywine River Museum
Purchased through the generosity of Mrs. Maxwell Moran and Anson M. Beard, Jr., 1996


“In Wyeth’s portrayal, Alan has (Howard) Pyle’s high brow, deep-socketed eyes, and long, straight, highbridged nose.”

N. C. Wyeth, “Alan Breck” chapter

by David Michaelis

A vibrant selection of Howard Pyle paintings are on permanent exhibition on the first floor of the Brandywine River Museum (Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania). They’re the natural starting point for an exploration of the museum. To get to the N. C. Wyeth paintings, you ascend a central spiral staircase* to the third floor. In some ways, the effect is charmingly rural (the building is a renovated 19th century grist mill), but it also summons images appropriate for the tales illustrated by Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth. Robin Hood would be at home ascending this staircase with sword drawn, or perhaps Dick and Joanna might descend to the dungeon, crossbow at the ready (one of my favorite N. C. Wyeth illustrations—from The Black Arrow).

The paintings by Howard Pyle should be encountered first—he’s the foundation. Pyle shaped a tradition of Brandywine Valley artistry that the Wyeth family embraced and ultimately transcended. Pyle was N. C. Wyeth’s greatest teacher and his mentor to the end.

And Pyle’s end came all too soon, just as the 29-year-old Wyeth was riding a mighty crest of critical and popular acclaim. N. C. Wyeth’s magnificent illustrations of Treasure Island were published in the Scribners Illustrated Classic edition, issued on October 22, 1911. Two and a half weeks later, Wyeth learned that Pyle had died in Italy. Wyeth knew that Pyle was unwell, but was emotionally unprepared for the news that his larger-than-life teacher and mentor, just 58 years old, was dead. A few months later, with the Treasure Island edition a bestseller, Wyeth was approached by Scribners to illustrate Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped as a follow-up. The art would naturally focus on the two central characters, Alan Breck and David Balfour—the crusty man of experience and his young admirer.

Alan Breck:  Detail of N. C. Wyeth's
  Kidnapped cover illustration.

In David Michaelis’ biography N. C. Wyeth, Michaelis makes a fairly convincing and well-documented argument that Wyeth used his artistic mentor Howard Pyle and his struggling younger brother Stimson Wyeth as models for the two lead characters in his Kidnapped illustrations.

Michaelis’ argument regarding the use of Wyeth’s brother Stimson as a model is rock solid. In a letter to Stimson, Wyeth wrote: “As David Balfour stands there wet and disconsolate …  in the mist and spray on my Isle of Earraid, the form and features of yourself come and go.” Michaelis suggests that Stimson stood in for an idealized self-portrait of Wyeth himself, pictured as a youth on the verge of self-discovery.

Howard Pyle.
University of Pittsburgh Digital
Library, Elizabeth Nesbitt Room.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The proposal that Alan Breck is a romanticized Howard Pyle is more conjectural, mainly relying upon comparisons between Stevenson’s descriptions of Alan Breck in Kidnapped, Wyeth’s visual interpretations of Breck, and our knowledge of Howard Pyle’s appearance. In the quote at the top of the page, Michaelis compares their faces.

Michaelis follows this with a consideration of their stature. In the Stevenson descriptions, Breck is a foot shorter than David. In contrast, Pyle and Wyeth were both solidly built men, with Pyle standing three inches taller. In Wyeth’s pictures, Alan Breck and David Balfour appear to be about the same height (although Wyeth often depicts Breck from a low perspective, making him appear more imposing—a larger-than-life presence).

Wyeth’s wonderful cover illustration for Kidnapped sets the tone for the novel, conveying its picaresque narrative and its emphasis on the relationship between Alan Breck and David. They are two men determined to take charge of their destinies. While Breck sets the destination and is the wiser from experience, David is the one who takes the lead, boldly moving into the future. Breck casts a look backwards, watching out for them both. If it is a tribute to Pyle, it’s a kind and good-humored one. The colorful feather, a fiery red against the white cloud, perfectly tops the character.

“This (Alan Breck) seems to me a gentleman of some choice qualities, though perhaps a trifle bloody-minded. It would please me none the worse, if (with all his merits) he were soused in the North Sea, for the man, Mr. David, is a sore embarrassment. But you are doubtless quite right to adhere to him; indubitably he adhered to you. It comes—we may say—he was your true companion…”

Kidnapped, Chapter XXVII

Robert Louis Stevenson

*  Elevator optional.

Reference Sources

N. C. Wyeth: A Biography by David Michaelis

N. C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations, and Murals by Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr.
The Brandywine Tradition by Henry C. Pitz
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art

Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life by Richard Meryman

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2013 Lee Price

The Centennial of N.C. Wyeth's Kidnapped

Celebrating cultural highlights
of 1913...
Wyeth-blogging, essay 1 on
N.C. Wyeth's Illustrations 
for Kidnapped

Dustjacket cover of Kidnapped by Robert Louis
Stevenson, a Scribner Illustrated Classic published
in 1913 with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his classic adventure novel Kidnapped in 1886, so the text technically falls outside of my current 1913 focus.  Nevertheless, I’m hoping to take this occasion to celebrate the 100th anniversary of a very special book, the 1913 Charles Scribner’s Sons “Juvenile Classics” edition of Kidnapped for which the publisher commissioned illustrations by Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth.

Wyeth was still young, just 30 years old, when his illustrated Kidnapped was published, but he already commanded a formidable reputation as one of the country’s most talented illustrators.  Scribner’s was a top national publisher and they were intentionally striving toward an unusually high standard for book illustration.  While still a student of the renowned illustrator Howard Pyle (1853-1911), Wyeth began selling pictures and taking commissions from Scribners, quickly establishing himself as the go-to artist for scenes of history and adventure.

Kidnapped was Wyeth’s follow-up to Treasure Island, a breakthrough masterpiece of adventure illustration.  A huge bestseller for Scribners, Treasure Island set a standard that even Wyeth knew would be hard to equal, much less surpass.  Scribners suggested doing Kidnapped next, and Wyeth weighed his options.  He was feeling ambitious.  “I want you to know,” he wrote the publisher, “that I have the greatest hopes, and unless I outclass Treasure Island I want you to cancel the entire scheme.”

Looking back on these highlights of a golden age of illustration, who really cares anymore if the illustrations for Kidnapped are better than Treasure Island?  Wyeth hurled himself into reimagining the adventure plots with an almost inhuman vigor and artistry, creating images that define and enlarge—even mythologize—the texts.  Considered as objects, these books are among the finest ever published because of the near perfect meshing of prose and illustration.  With the Scribners’ editions of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, the boys’ novel became art.

Title page of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson,
a Scribner Illustrated Classic published
in 1913 with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

Reference Sources

N. C. Wyeth: A Biography by David Michaelis

N.C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations, and Murals by Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr.
The Brandywine Tradition by Henry C. Pitz
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art

Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life by Richard Meryman

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

My low-resolution copies of the N.C. Wyeth book illustrations are via the beautiful high-resolution scans at The Golden Age, one of my favorite art blogs on the internet.

© 2013 Lee Price