The words of David Adjaye are so on point in design that it’s appropriate to include this video and article on our site. Whether you’re an illustrator, painter, sculptor or architect his words ring true.
TIME Magazine has named architect David Adjaye to their annual list of 100 Most Influential People, recognizing the world figures who have had the most impact on society in the past year in five categories: Pioneers, Titans, Artists, Leaders, and Icons. Unlike Bjarke Ingels and Wang Shu – who were selected under the Artist category in 2016 and 2013, respectively – Adjaye was nominated in the Icons category alongside champions including media personality RuPaul, subversive photographer Cindy Sherman, and US Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights leader who was the original advocate for a National African American Museum in Washington, which was eventually designed by Adjaye and inaugurated last September.
In the citation for the award, Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem (and currently working with the architect on an expansion project for the museum), describes Adjaye as “one of the great architectural visionaries of our time,” and lauds his work as “deeply rooted in both the present moment and the complex context of history.”
I love the color and clean architectural lines in Riikka’s work. A bit of whimsy and a storyline are infused in the imagery. For more about Riika go to here
This article and profile is running on Eye on Design. Info below.
For the past 100 years, AIGA has celebrated, lauded, applauded, championed, cheered, awarded, supported, and (most of all) loved great design. In the next century we expect to see a lot more, so we’re turning a well-trained eye on the best new work from emerging and established designers alike in the AIGA Eye on Design blog.
On Sunday Havi and I and our two dogs Atticus and April Snow went out to see my friend Rhonda Kap-Volotsky and her husband Alisha. I didn’t know much about their work except that Rhonda works in metal and Alisha is a glass artist. When we drove up to their home we saw all sorts of artistic touches bordering a traditional style ranch house. As we drove into the driveway we could see their studio and the two artists puttering around the converted garage. WE unloaded the dogs and exchanged greetings. AS I looked around I saw more tools hanging on the wall than at the local Home depot.
After a short get together which featured Turkish coffee and some dried orange peels and walnuts we were taken to the studio upstairs from the garage floor. Both artists works were featured. Rhonda’s organic and delicate copper work and Alisha’s beautiful, majestic sandblasted glass sculpture and furniture filled the space. It was most impressive. Both artists were warm and friendly and very humble. They’ve been attending art shows for years all over the country establishing their brand. Alisha’s work can be found at this link or http://youtu.be/LU-OleBkx10
I’ve known Tony Donaldson for a few years and he has taught me a lot about photography. I’ve marveled at some of the techniques and action shots I’ve seen and his constant search to do better. You can read more about Tony is this Spring’s edition of LPIK Photography. In the meantime here is an interview Tony gave to me a few weeks ago which I found fascinating.
How did your parents influence you as a young creative ? Were they encouraging?
My parents encouraged me and my sister in our creative pursuits. My sister was big into dance and painting, she’s now a jewelry maker. I grew up with several creative outlets, from Lego to BMX freestyle to creating/improving computer games. We were encouraged to use our imagination a lot, we didn’t have money to spend on many of the toys we wanted. Imagination is often better than the real thing. We made guns with sticks, collected random stuff, repurposed a lot of things.
Did you have any major influences as a boy that motivated you to become a photographer? BMX riding?
BMX was a major influence. My parents bought me my first BMX bike as a present for Christmas when I was eleven or twelve. I immediately started hanging out with kids from school with BMX bikes and we all started racing. We did tricks on the weekdays between race weekends, emulating stuff we saw in magazines and creating our own stuff. I then found I loved the attention I got by doing tricks, so I started a freestyle team. We did shows around the midwest, it was amazing. It truly was like being a rock star. I had groupies and learned a lot about promotion.
In college, a friend who worked for the associated Press took me to a football game (Illini vs Michigan). I had no idea how to work a camera. He handed me a Nikon F3T (titanium body) with a Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 lens, loaded with Tri-X and showed me the basics of focus and metering. I shot two rolls while we were there. That was back in the days when it was 100% film. At half-time, he showed me how to rewind the film and put in another roll for me. He then went into the AP darkroom, processed his film, sent a print out over the wire, then came back out and shot the rest of the game before doing it again. He didn’t process my film then. Afterward, we went to a women’s volleyball game. He shot it, I watched. It was indoors, and that’s a lot trickier than shooting in daylight.
He processed my film that night, walked out of the darkroom, and exclaimed, “I’ve been trying to get this fucking shot for 15 YEARS!”. In my first two rolls, I had gotten the quarterback flipping over the one-yard line, ball in hand, scoring a touchdown. Luck or skill, I got the shot. He then took me under his wing and started teaching me the basics. Within a couple of months I started shooting assignments as a stringer for AP and had taken over as the photo editor for the college paper. Living in the capital city, every Presidential hopeful came through to speak before the primary election. I have a lot of stories about that, but that’s a whole other article.
I decided to shoot something I love, so I picked a National BMX event in Memphis, Tennessee to shoot. I wrote to all the magazines just to tell them who I was, that I’d be there and that I’d like to meet them. John Ker from BMX Plus! magazine called me and said they had nobody going to that race and asked if I’d shoot it for them. After I picked up my jaw from the floor, I agreed. I shot it, they liked the images so much that they asked me to come out to California and hang out to see if I got along with the staff. I finished the semester and flew to California for my first time ever at age 19. I met my childhood heroes, the racers and freestylers that were just these figures in the magazines before that. I spent a week sleeping on one of the editor’s couches and traveling all over Southern California shooting. It was amazing. And the magazine really liked what I shot. It helps to have grown up reading the magazines and being involved with BMX to be able to portray it in pictures dynamically. And having the greatest riders in the world made it even greater.
They didn’t have an opening, but had me traveling all over the midwest for a couple of months shooting events near me. A 19-year-old kid, absolutely excited to be living a dream he really had just had! Then John called me up and asked me if I’d like to take a staff position because somebody was leaving. I jumped at the chance, packing what I could into my car and driving 2000 miles in 2.5 days. I drove 14 hours a day, got a hotel, then went riding for a couple of hours. The first night I made it to Texas. I stopped in the town of Shamrock. The natural ham in me wanted to show off a little, and since this was a small town, I headed for the local Dairy Queen. I knew it would be the hangout. It was. I was jeered at first, but I made friends with the locals and even taught one of the kids who wasn’t even a BMX guy how to do a really hard trick. To his credit, not only was he a quick study, but he did it in COWBOY BOOTS! I love making friends, and BMX and photography have been amazing facilitators.
I arrived, got a nice check for all the freelance work and got settled. But I was still flying someplace almost every weekend to hang out with my friends at racing and freestyle events. Once again, a 19-year-old rock star lifestyle.
How did working at various magazines influence and shape your work??I was hired by American Freestyler, a title under the same publisher and in the same office as BMX Plus! Freestyle was on a downward part of its cycle, so that magazine that had spun off from Plus! was incorporated back in. I was a terrible writer at first, but I ended up writing almost half of every issue of the magazine every month, so I improved pretty quickly. Working for enthusiast magazines, you don’t have to be Kierkegaard, you have to be personable and know the sport. John Ker was my second photography mentor and a great mentor for writing as well. I learned to write conversationally, instead of the inverted pyramid news style I’d learned in journalism classes.
Working seven days a week without a break for over a year burned me out pretty quickly. I wasn’t making much and had no time to relax. Even as a 20-year-old kid, that’s a lot to handle. Especially when I was constantly butting heads with another staffer who was my age. I left and worked for photo labs and then for an automotive collectibles magazine for a while. That was interesting, because the ENTIRE staff of the magazine was two people, including me. I had to write, shoot, sell ads, ship issues, answer phones. It was fun, but eventually the publisher ran out of money and sold it to another small publishing company. I went with it, but the publisher was a complete asshole so I left and went out on my own.
I was freelancing, but not super-busy. I decided to start assisting. Seems backwards, work for ten years as a photographer and THEN become an assistant, but it was great all the way around. I got to learn and get paid, something I’d highly recommend if you’re going into photography. Better than photography school. I worked with a lot of photographers, and they all said that the first thing you have to do with a photo school graduate is make them unlearn everything they learned about doing photography “properly” and learn to do it in the real world. I’ve experienced this as well. I assisted every kind of photographer, from product to people to weddings to architecture and more. And for magazines, catalogs and advertising. It was the most amazing and practical education ever. I learned how various photographers use and shape light and what equipment they use for it, how they deal with various economies (how to squeeze every penny out of editorial shoots, how to properly handle the seemingly cubic dollars on advertising shoots, etc.). Things went wrong on shoots. Capacitors blew. Lenses broke. People didn’t show up. Rental equipment didn’t work. And I got to see how different photographers dealt with these things. Some were masters at rolling with the punches. They were the greatest to work with!
Now, this knowledge comes in handy, as does my childhood use of my imagination, to be able to create images I want to create on assignments with any budget. And when something goes wrong, I’m prepared. I carry spares of a lot of things, always multiple cameras and lenses, often multiple lights. I also always bring good snacks and food. A happy, well-fed crew is WAY more productive. People love to work with me because I’m low-stress, able to communicate what I want and create a collaborative atmosphere. I end up working with the same people over and over because they like working with me. Same with athletes, etc.
When did you start writing articles about photography and why did you start?
I’ve always been a really technical guy. I said that the football game was the first time I’d ever handled a 35mm SLR, but it wasn’t my first time with a camera. My dad had an old Polaroid Land camera and some expired film. I loved shooting stuff with that. Even shot action, like Lego cars I made jumping off of steps. And shot my friends skateboarding with my dad’s camera with a detachable flash, setting the camera on bulb and using the flash to freeze action at night. I got the concepts Seth (Perlman, my friend who works for AP) taught me quickly and have always been thirsty for knowledge. I’ve always pushed my cameras.
Sometimes when you float about the internet you arrive at a place where wonder happens. Such is my journey to John Kenn’s post-art. I believe John is a talent who will be recognized for his greatest soon. The work only need application and exposure. it’s pure simple and pristine. So here’s an interview with John Kenn.
Can you give me a brief background about you and your work? Particularly which television shows you write and direct?
I have a Bachelors degree in Character Animation from the Animation Workshop in Denmark. I graduated in 2007 and have been working at Copenhagen Bombay for about 3 years. Right now, I am working on two different TV-shows: I am directing Carsten & Gitte’s Funky-Tonky Treehouse 2nd season (we are filming this and next week) which is a puppet show. The other one I am both writing and directing is a sitcom for kids with three monkeys who run their own restaurant. It is called Restaurangotang. (It only has a Danish title at the moment). Other than monkeys, it has a ninja, an elf and a grumpy man with newspaper.
Why did you start this project?
So I wouldn’t die. (I know it is a silly answer, but I just HAVE to draw and I HAVE to tell stories and I have to do it fast, and by doing it this way on post-it notes I can get it all out fast, so that I won’t stress myself (or bore myself) to death.)
Are you a professionally trained artist?
I am a professionally trained character animator. Drawing is just something I have been doing all my life from the very start. I am not a professionally trained writer or storyteller, but I guess that is also something I have been doing for as long as I remember.
What has the response been like to your post-it note art?
It has been very good. I didn’t expect there to be any response, but a lot of people seem to be enjoying them.
How do you come up with your stories?
I have no idea… sorry. And I try not to think about it that much, but I use whatever pops into my head and then just throw away what doesn’t work.
What are they based on (and/or what are you inspired by)?
Some on childhood nightmares but mostly I am very inspired by literature and folklore. Stephen King is without a doubt the biggest inspiration, both his work-methods and his stories. The other big one is, of course, H.P. Lovecraft.
We noticed a Tim Burtonesque feeling to your art. Are you inspired by him?
A tiny bit, especially his early works: Frankenweenie, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands. I think I am inspired by the same things as he was inspired by as a young artist, and from what I know we both suffered the same kind of childhood in the suburbs.
What do you hope others will get out of your art?
It warms my heart when I am able to scare people or just give them the sense of having experienced a small adventure from something so simple as a drawing on a post-it note.
Thanks for the interview, John. Love your ghoulishly great pieces.
Fábio Ragonha from Limeira/São Paulo, Brazil has been creating art for the last decade. He has been a 3D Generalist artist for 8 years. Currently he is working on creating spots for TV,digital media, illustrations for advertising, characters and other freelance projects.
What’s fun about Fabio’s art is his quirky characters and his use of various textures that seem oddly out of place within the settings of his art like the Astronaut above in a fabric suit wearing what looks like rubber boots. Again his work looks retro in the gun design and the overall feel of the piece. A fat alien also looks very non-threatening and humorous despite it’s stern appearance. I’m looking forward to seeing more stuff from him.
For those of you who missed our radio show with Matt Gaser here is the link to hear him talk about his work and his life as an artist. Fascinating stuff!
Matt Gaser is a concept artist currently working for Lucasfilm Animation on the new Star Wars CG television series.
He was Senior Concept Artist for Stormfront Studios on their recent game Forgotten Realms Dreamstone. Prior to that he was Concept Artist on their game for The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers.
He started out with an interest in animation when, in high school, he was appointed California Art Scholar and had the opportunity to attend a summer art seminar in traditional animation at Cal Arts. He majored in Illustration as Art Center College of Design and went on to intern at Klasky Group (Rugrats).
Amid his professional work, Gaser finds time to work on his own projects, including a GC short film and two children’s books. You will also find in his galleries, that he keeps up with figure drawing and finds time to sketch and doodle.
Gaser works primarily digitally, but his images have a nice feeling of paint surface and materials. He has a terrific sense of color and a wonderful command of lighting as a theatrical device for creating focus within a composition. He knows how to control your eye and make a small area of an image snap into clear relief as a focal point.
In the Projects gallery, you’ll find some his work for the Dreamstone project. As with many concept artists, however, I find myself most drawn to the work in his Personal section, where he has been able to let his considerably fertile imagination run free, with delightful results.
When left to his own devices, Gaser creates bizarre landscapes populated with offbeat characters that make you want to know more about the “story”, even if there isn’t one.
In my ever growing quest to find different and interesting artists and art I came across Julie Heffernan. And I am glad I did. Her work is simply terrific. It spans illustration and fine art well and can be utilized for both as far as I’m concerned.
Julie Heffernan (born 1956 in Peoria, Illinois) is an American Painter. David Cohen, art critic of The New York Sun, aptly describes Heffernan’s art: “These paintings are a hybrid of genres and styles, mixing allegory, portraiture, history painting, and still life, while in title they are all presented as self portraits.”
Heffernan was raised in Northern California and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She received a B.F.A., at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an M.F.A. in painting at the Yale School of Art. Heffernan is an Associate Professor of fine arts at Montclair State University in Upper Montclair, New Jersey.
She is married to Jonathan Kalb, chair of the Theater Department at Hunter College and theater critic for The New York Times. Heffernan is the mother of two sons: Oliver, the eldest, and Sam.
In her 2007 self-portrait series, Booty, Julie Heffernan painted herself dressed in creepy dresses made from dead animal carcasses. In this colorful collection of portraits, the artist presents herself draped in pompous dresses made of dead animal carcasses, flowers and fruits. Like Heffernan’s other art series, these bizarre-yet-beautiful paintings are a constant dilemma between the gorgeous and the grotesque, attraction and repulsion.
I have taken note that my article about the french painter Balthus gets quite a lot of traffic and I wondered why. I started to dig deeper into Balthus, his life, his work and attitudes he possessed. It’s well known he had a “thing” for underaged girls and young women who were at most half his age. He didn’t seem to care and his attitude made him more controversial, dangerous and perhaps marketable.
Below are some of his quotes from “Brainy Quotes” and they do reveal a little about Balthus the man.
I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings. Balthus
I refuse to confide and don’t like it when people write about art. Balthus
I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings. Balthus
One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil. Balthus
Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don’t know what to say about what I paint, really. Balthus
Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish. Balthus
Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible. Balthus
Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle. Balthus
The best way to begin is to say: Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at his paintings. Balthus
The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.
When I was a young kid reading King Arthur and other books illusterated by NC Wyeth I had no idea who he was. All I knew was his paintings made the words in the book come to life. My experience of those books were dictated by his incredible artwork. As I read the words in the story his images came to life and the imagery danced in my brain making the reading whiz by as if the words weren’t even there. When someone’s artwork does that to you you know he’s communicating on a level most illustrators never get. So it’s appropriate that the initial illustrator featured here at the Illustrators Journal blog would be Wyeth.This picture of Wyeth was taken around 1903 in his studio. The robust confidence of Wyeth comes across in this artist pose.
N.C. Wyeth was born in Needham, Massachusetts. His ancestor, Nicholas Wyeth, a stonemason, came to Massachusetts from England in 1645. Later ancestors were prominent participants in the French and Indian Wars, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War, passing down rich oral histories and tradition to N.C. Wyeth and his family and providing subject matter for his art, which was deeply felt. His maternal ancestors came from Switzerland, and as a child, his mother was acquainted with literary giants Henry David Thoreau and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His literary appreciation and artistic talents appear to have come from her.
He was the oldest of four brothers who spent much time hunting, fishing, and enjoying other outdoor pursuits, and doing chores on their farm. His varied youthful activities and his naturally astute sense of observation later aided the authenticity of his illustrations and obviated the need for models: “When I paint a figure on horseback, a man plowing, or a woman buffeted by the wind, I have an acute sense of the muscle strain.”
His mother encouraged his early inclination toward art. Wyeth was doing excellent watercolor paintings by the age of twelve.[6] He went to Mechanics Arts School to learn drafting, and then the Massachusetts Normal Arts School and the Eric Pape School of Art to learn illustration, under George Loftus Noyes and Charles W. Reed.
When two of his friends were accepted to Howard Pyle’s School of Art in Wilmington, Delaware and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Wyeth was invited to try to join them in 1902. Howard Pyle was the “father” of American illustration, and Wyeth immediately meshed with his methods and ideals. Pyle’s approach included excursions to historical sites and impromptu dramas using props and costumes, meant to stimulate imagination, emotion, atmosphere, and the observation of humans in action—all necessities for his style of illustration. Pyle stressed historical accuracy and tinged it with a romantic aura. But where Pyle painted in exquisite detail, Wyeth veered toward looser, quicker strokes and relied on ominous shadows and moody backgrounds. He probably picked up his glazing technique from Pyle.
Wyeth’s exuberant personality and talent made him a standout student. A robust, powerfully built young man with strangely delicate hands, he ate a lot less than his size implied. He admired great literature, music, and drama, and he enjoyed spirited conversation.
A bucking bronco for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on February 21, 1903 was Wyeth’s first commission as an illustrator. That year he described his work as “true, solid American subjects–nothing foreign about them.”
It was a spectacular accomplishment for the 21-year-old Wyeth, after just a few months under Pyle’s tutelage. In 1904, the same magazine commissioned him to illustrate a Western story, and Pyle urged Wyeth to go West to acquire direct knowledge, much as Zane Grey had done for his Western novels. In Colorado, he worked as a cowboy alongside the professional “punchers”, moving cattle and doing ranch chores. He visited the Navajo in Arizona and gained an understanding of Native American culture. When his money was stolen, he worked as a mail carrier, riding between the Two Grey Hills trading post and Fort Defiance, to earn enough to get back home. He wrote home, “The life is wonderful, strange — the fascination of it clutches me like some unseen animal — it seems to whisper, ‘Come back, you belong here, this is your real home.’ ”
On a second trip two years later, he collected information on mining and brought home costumes and artifacts, including cowboy and Indian clothing. His early trips to the western United States inspired a period of images of cowboys and Native Americans that dramatized the Old West. His depictions of Native Americans tended to be sympathetic, showing them in harmony with their environment, as demonstrated by In the Crystal Depths (1906).
Upon returning to Chadds Ford, he painted a series of farm scenes for Scribner’s, finding the landscape less dramatic than that of the West but nonetheless a rich environment for his art: “Everything lies in its subtleties, everything is so gentle and simple, so unaffected.” His painting Mowing (1907), not done for illustration, was among the most successful images of rural life, rivaling Winslow Homer’s great scenes of Americana.
He married Carolyn Bockius of Wilmington and settled in Chadds Ford in 1908 to raise a family on 18 acres near the historic Brandywine battlefield. By now, he had left Pyle, and commissions were coming in quickly. His hope had been that he would make enough money with his illustrations to be able to afford the luxury of painting what he wanted; but as his family and income grew, he found it difficult to break from illustration.
N.C. Wyeth created a stimulating household for his talented children Andrew Wyeth, Henriette Wyeth Hurd, Carolyn Wyeth, Ann Wyeth McCoy, and Nathaniel C. Wyeth. Wyeth was very sociable, and frequent visitors included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Hergesheimer, Hugh Walpole, Lillian Gish, and John Gilbert. According to Andrew, who spent the most time with his father on account of his sickly childhood, N.C. was a strict but patient father who did not talk down to his children. His hard work as an illustrator gave his family the financial freedom to follow their own artistic and scientific pursuits. Andrew went on to become one of the foremost American artists of the second half of the 20th century, and both Henriette and Carolyn became artists also; Ann became an artist and composer. Nathaniel became an engineer for DuPont and worked on the team that invented the plastic soda bottle. Henriette and Ann married two of N.C.’s protégés, Peter Hurd and John W. McCoy. N.C. Wyeth is the grandfather of artist Jamie Wyeth and musician Howard Wyeth.
By 1911, N.C. Wyeth began to move away from Western subjects and on to illustrating classic literature. He painted a series for an edition of Treasure Island (1911), by Robert Louis Stevenson, thought by many to be his finest group of illustrations. The proceeds from this great success paid for his house and studio.[13] He also illustrated editions of Kidnapped (1913), Robin Hood (1917), The Last of the Mohicans (1919), Robinson Crusoe (1920), Rip Van Winkle (1921), The White Company (1922), and The Yearling (1939). He did work for prominent periodicals, including Century, Harper’s Monthly, Ladies’ Home Journal, McClure’s, Outing, The Popular Magazine, and Scribner’s. His early works were sold outright at a handsome price, but only much later did he receive royalties. Wyeth would read a book thoroughly before doing the contracted illustrations, and he specifically created scenes that were thinly described in the book, adding details and mood of his own, as in Old Pew (1911).
By 1914, Wyeth loathed the commercialism upon which he became dependent, and for the rest of his life, he battled internally over his capitulation, accusing himself of having “bitched myself with the accursed success in skin-deep pictures and illustrations.” He complained of money men “who want to buy me piecemeal” and that “an illustration must be made practical, not only in its dramatic statement, but it must be a thing that will adapt itself to the engravers’ and printers’ limitations. This fact alone kills that underlying inspiration to create thought. Instead of expressing that inner feeling, you express the outward thought… or imitation of that feeling.”
Wyeth also did posters, calendars, and advertisements for clients such as Lucky Strike, Cream of Wheat, and Coca-Cola, as well as paintings of Beethoven, Wagner, and Liszt for Steinway & Sons. He painted murals of historical and allegorical subjects for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Westtown School, the First National Bank of Boston, the Hotel Roosevelt, the Franklin Savings Bank, the National Geographic Society, and other public and private buildings. During both World Wars, he contributed patriotic images to government and private agencies.
His nonillustrative portrait and landscape paintings changed dramatically in style throughout his life as he experimented first with impressionism in the 1910s (feeling an affinity with the nearby “New Hope Group”), then by the 1930s veering to the realistic American regionalism of Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, painting with thin oils and occasionally, egg tempera. Wyeth worked rapidly and experimented constantly, often working on a larger scale than necessary, befitting his energetic and grand vision, which often harked back to his ancestral past. He could conceive, sketch out, and paint a large painting in as little as three hours.
By the 1930s, he restored an old captain’s house in Port Clyde, Maine, named “Eight Bells” after a Winslow Homer painting, and took his family there for summers, where he painted primarily seascapes. Museums started to purchase his paintings, and by 1941, he was elected to the National Academy and exhibited on a regular basis.
In 1945, N.C. Wyeth and his grandson (Nathaniel C. Wyeth’s son) died in an accident at a railway crossing near his Chadds Ford home.
One More Step, Mr. Hands by N.C. Wyeth, 1911, for Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
At the time of his death, Wyeth was working on an ambitious series of murals for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company depicting the Pilgrims at Plymouth, a series completed by Andrew Wyeth and John McCoy.
In June 1945, he received the honorary degree of master of arts from Bowdoin College. N.C. Wyeth was a member of the National Academy, the Society of Illustrators, the Philadelphia Water Color Club, the Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Chester County Art Association, and the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts.
Significant public collections of Wyeth’s work are on display at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, and in Maine, at the Portland Museum of Art and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. The Brandywine River Museum offers tours of the N.C. Wyeth House and Studio in Chadds Ford. The home and studio were designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1997.
Other resources:
Wyeth Collection at The National Museum of American Illustration
N.C. Wyeth Biography
Bronco Buster, Cream of Wheat advertisement 1906 or 1907, courtesy Minneapolis Institute of Arts
N C Wyeth / Newell Convers Wyeth artwork can be viewed at American Art Archives web site
N.C. Wyeth Catalogue Raisonné An online catalogue raisonné from the Brandywine River Museum
Brandywine School
National Museum of American Illustration
