Precious Time

by N.C. Wyeth

Published in conjuction with the exhibition N.C. Wyeth: Precious Time at the Portland Museum of Art, June 22-October 15, 2000.

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

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.