Nc wyeth short biography

American illustrator and painter (1882–1945)

Not to be confused with Nathan C. Wyeth.

Newell Convers Wyeth (October 22, 1882 – October 19, 1945), known as N. C. Wyeth, was an American painter and illustrator. He was a student of Howard Pyle and became one of America's most well-known illustrators. Wyeth created more than 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books — 25 of them for Scribner's, the Scribner Classics, which is the body of work 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 also well-known American painters.

Early life

Wyeth was born in 1882, in Massachusetts to parents Andrew Newell Wyeth II and Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth. An 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

Wyeth, N.C. – American Illustrator 1882-1945

WYETH, N. C. AMERICAN ILLUSTRATOR, 1882-1945. Howard Pyle’s most famous pupil and closest follower, Newell Conyers Wyeth (known professionally by his initials) had an artistic personality quite distinct, in style and substance, from the Master’s.

Raised on a Massachusetts farm staked out by the N.C. Wyeths in 1730, he was a vigorous outdoorsman and a keen observer of nature’s contours and shadings. His letters, otherwise banal, come alive in reference to “mellow, beseeching hills,” to a large blue-black butterfly “lazying his way through the soft air.” The boy who drew horses and other real-life things became, at an art teacher’s suggestion, a student of illustration.

But the training, with its emphasis on cleverness and stunts, rankled; and when word reached Wyeth of Howard Pyle‘s new school in the Brandywine Valley, he was an eager, anxious applicant. The ensuing interview was the pivotal event of Wyeth’s life: though he sometimes criticized Pyle in later years and rued concentrating on illustration, Pyle remained the fountainhead of his aspirations, the impetus to “the unattainable in art.”

Everything about the Pyle studio-school, then at full throttle (see Brandywine School), agreed with Wyeth: the summers at Chadds Ford on the Brandywine; the student camaraderie; the intense effort and inspired teaching; the manifest results. Spurred on by the advanced students’ magazine work, Wyeth painted an oil in the flamboyant Wild West manner—a wild bronco, pitching and twisting to unseat his rider—and submitted it to the Saturday Evening Post; on February 21, 1903, Wyeth’s first professional effort was the Post’s cover illustration, heralding a story by Western writer Emerson Hough, and the young artist, at twenty, was on his way.

The direction was plain. Further Western assignments

N.C. Wyeth

N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945) was one of America’s foremost illustrators in the 20th century. His renowned images of swashbuckling pirates, armor-clad knights and hard-riding cowboys fired the imaginations of readers for generations.   

In 1902, twenty-year-old Newell Convers Wyeth, from Needham, Massachusetts, joined the Howard Pyle School of Art in Wilmington, Delaware. Pyle’s influence was a vital catalyst, and after several years of study, Wyeth quickly became one of the period’s most popular magazine illustrators. In 1911, the publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons commissioned Wyeth to illustrate a new edition of Treasure Island.  Skillfully blending romance and realism into his pictures, he gave form to Stevenson’s characters and settings, creating vivid, dramatic images. Ten years later—with a series of “Scribner’s Classics” to his credit—Wyeth was as famous as the authors whose stories he illustrated.

Wyeth was sought after for book and magazine commissions throughout his career; at the same time, however, and like most illustrators of the period, he was troubled by the distinction made between illustrators and artists. To escape what he felt were the pejorative connotations of being merely an illustrator, Wyeth sought recognition in other spheres of art. His private work includes still lifes, portraits and landscapes of Chadds Ford as well as his summer property in Port Clyde, Maine. Wyeth also enjoyed a reputation as a muralist and painted advertising images. In every area, he proved himself to be an expert draughtsman and colorist. Wyeth explored various styles and mastered techniques which range from the broadly brushed to the near photographic. 

N.C. Wyeth settled in Chadds Ford in 1907, where he later built a house and studio that are now part of the Brandywine Museum of Art and open seasonally to the public. He and his wife, Carolyn, raised five talented children: three grew to be artists (Henr