Tuesday 7 September 2010

Andrew Wyeth


In my second post about the American artist dynasty of the Wyeth family I am featuring the best known, Andrew Wyeth. In my last post I looked at the illustration work of his father, N. C. Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth (1917 – 2009) is best known for his detailed tempera paintings of people in the north-eastern landscape around his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and at his summer home in Cushing, Maine. I actually prefer the freshness and immediacy of his watercolours. These are big, bold watercolours done as ever in a muted palette. I first came across them at the Lefevre Gallery in London in the 1970's.

Andrew Wyeth was primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known American artists of the middle 20th century, and was sometimes referred to as the "Painter of the People," due to his work's popularity with the American public.


































































Sunday 5 September 2010

N. C. Wyeth


A lot of people will be familiar with the works of Andrew Wyeth, the famous American Painter best known for his detailed realistic portraits of the people and the land around the north-eastern States. Possibly what is less known, at least here in England is that the Wyeth family is a small dynasty of painters, Andrew being the best known. His father N. C. Wyeth was a well known artist and illustrator of derring-do childrens books. Andrew's  son Jamie Wyeth has followed in his father's footsteps. I'll feature the work of all three here, starting with N. C Wyeth.

Newell Convers Wyeth (1882 –1945) was the star pupil of artist the Howard Pyle and became one of America's greatest illustrators. During his lifetime, Wyeth created over 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books, 25 of them for Scribner's, which is the work for which he is best known.
Wyeth was a realist painter just as the camera and photography began to compete with his craft. Sometimes seen as melodramatic, his illustrations were designed to be understood quickly. Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, and said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other."