Wyeth, Wyeth and Pyle

|Chadds Ford Arts| New book explores art of Andrew and N.C.

Wyeth and Howard Pyle, with tours and interviews Wyeth,

By Ken Mammarella Contributing Writer

One subject of “Artists of Wyeth Country,” W. Barksdale Maynard’s new book, is Andrew Wyeth. “He is the most famous artist our area has ever produced – or will produce,” the Greenville resident said in an interview, and that alone makes him worthy of study.

The other men in the book’s subtitle place Wyeth in context: N.C. Wyeth, his father; and Howard Pyle, N.C.’s teacher and patriarch of the Brandywine Tradition of illustration. “Superb draftsmanship, sumptuous handling of oil paint, gripping storylines, and every detail rooted in extremely close visual observation – if not exhaustive historical research,” Maynard explains in the preface.

“Biographers have long depicted Andrew Wyeth as a lone-wolf, Tom Sawyer figure, but he has to be seen as part of a larger whole in context with the wealthy and influential du Pont family and in American art,” he said.

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Wyeth and Pyle

All photos courtesy of W. Barksdale Maynard

Maynard believes this is the tree in Andrew Wyeth’s “Corner of the Woods,” from 1954. Andrew Wyeth’s “Groundhog Day” from 1959 was painted from this window in the Kuerner kitchen.

N.C.’s death in a 1945 auto accident left Andrew “brooding and haunted, having trouble painting,” Maynard said, referring to a myth that needs to be punctured. “Andrew Wyeth was charming, delightful and madcap,” he said. “That was definitely a surprise” to learn in researching the book.

“I wrote this book because I believe that the art of the Brandywine painters cannot be understood apart from the real places they depicted and drew inspiration from, with 300 years of cultural heritage behind them,” Maynard writes in the preface.

Maynard has written seven books (including “The Brandywine: An Intimate Portrait,” a history of the region, from original European settlement to the 1777 Battle of the Brandywine), co-authored two more and crafted hundreds of magazine articles.

How the book came to be

Maynard earned a bachelor of arts degree in art history from Princeton University and a

Continued on Page 12 N.C. and Andrew Wyeth both painted this tree, at Lafeyette’s battlefield headquarters.

doctorate in art history from the University of Delaware, and he also studied at the University of Alabama, Parsons School of Design – The New School and the University of Washington. He has lectured on art and architecture at Princeton, the University of Delaware and elsewhere.

His extensive academic background gives him great insight in answering a question that fans of Andrew Wyeth have been asking for decades: Why aren’t Ph.D.s writing about him?

A surprising answer might be Wyeth’s penchant for privacy, enabled by friends and neighbors for so long; maintained by Betsy, his wife and business manager; and perpetuated by the Wyeth office, 12 years after his death.

The office required the opportunity to review Maynard’s manuscript, he said. It requested no changes but also refused to allow any of Wyeth’s works to be reproduced, forcing Maynard to digitally fuzz out any art in the background of other photos. It even denied him the chance to see the paint box that Wyeth carried in his truck. The office was asked why but did not respond.

Wyeth’s son, Jamie, and his only grandchild, Victoria, who had helped him on his “Brandywine” book, also declined to participate with this one.

Tours, too

So Maynard relied on about 50 interviews (“when you take them all together, dozens of them, you form a picture”) and lots of driving and walking to create six tours to explore Wyeth Country. If you want to see a specific artwork being referenced, most are posted somewhere online, he noted. Readers are impressed. “I have a great appreciation for how much work went into the book, as well as the difficulty of obtaining information from certain sources,” said Andrew Wyeth often sketched and Chadds Ford resident Geoff Snelling. “An painted the John Chads House. extremely well-written and informed book on a fascinating part of the world.” “I thought I knew all there was to know about Wyeth, but your book is filled with so many unknown insights,” West Virginia artist Lauren Tilden said. “It has inspired me to get out and walk and draw.” Tours form the bulk of the 238-page book. On roadways and footpaths, they venture barely more than a mile from the N.C. Wyeth homestead. They are “ ‘An Illustrators’ Haven’: Brandywine Battlefield Park,” “Harvey Run Trail,” “Trail to the Wyeth Studios at Rocky Hill,” “Brandywine River Trail to the John Chads House,” “ ‘The Most Famous Farm in the World’: Andrew Wyeth at Keurner’s” and “Archie’s Corner to the Brandywine.”

“Andrew and Betsy Wyeth lived here in the 1940s and 1950s as his career blossomed,” Maynard writes. “He continued to use the studio room (left) until his death.” When Andrew Wyeth depicted the Barns-Brinton House in “Tenant Farmer” in 1961, he left out the bustle of Route 1.

Howard Pyle rented Painter’s Folly “on the battlefield in Chadds Ford,” Maynard writes. “A century later, the elderly Andrew Wyeth began visiting the place constantly.”

Maynard began working on the book in 2018, and it was published in May by Temple University Press. “My goal on every page is to give the reader new material, new tales. He’s been dead 12 years, and memories are fading rapidly,” he said.

Cheeseburger rare, a favorite corner table

“This book couldn’t be written 20 years from now, and I felt the responsibility to tell the writers of future biographers what people who knew Wyeth said,” Maynard said. “I wanted to emphasize living people. I asked them if they had been interviewed before, and many said that they hadn’t.”

On page 77, readers learn that Wyeth liked his cheeseburger rare from Jimmy John’s; page 97 notes his reserved table at the Chadds Ford Inn was in the southeast corner. But more importantly, many tidbits develop Wyeth’s impact on Chadds Ford and American art.

“ ‘Man, Chadds Ford was a cool place,” artist Terry Newitt recalled in the book. “At the height of 1970s Andrew Wyeth mania, devotees stayed at the Chadds Ford Inn and dreamed of sighting the artist. Locals generally pointed them in the wrong direction.”

These devotees were doomed in their desire to even meet and let alone be him. “No artist has been given more opportunity,” Maynard said. “His father trained him. His wife managed him. Not a life of suffering. Not hurt in the Depression. Didn’t go to war. No particular challenges. Didn’t carry a wristwatch or a wallet. He was uniquely positioned to be an artist. There was no other artist like this in the 20th century.”

But this is the 21st century. “I never met anyone under the age of 45 who knows of him,” Maynard said. Except for the author’s three children, who know Wyeth too well from listening to their father talk. Eventually, he became in their household “the Artist Who Shall Be Nameless.”