Newell Convers Wyeth was an American artist and illustrator. He was a pupil of Howard Pyle during the Golden Age of Illustration.
During his lifetime, Wyeth created more than 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books, twenty-five of them for the Scribner Classics, for which he is best known. The first of these, Treasure Island, was one of his masterpieces and the proceeds paid for his studio. Wyeth was a realist painter at a time when 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."
He is the father of Andrew Wyeth and the grandfather of Jamie Wyeth, both well-known American painters.
I am so glad I read this, and read it until the end. This was fascinating. It was a beautiful and true window into the Wyeth family. NC was quite the letter writer. One of my big takeaways was how much he truly loved his family and the letters to his adult children were beautiful. What a great read.
I always knew that N.C. Wyeth was a complicated, creative and fascinating man and his letters confirm it. This was a great insight into his life and thoughts.