Introduction to N.C. Wyeth
Acknowledgment
N.C. Wyeth: New Perspectives With thanks to the Brandywine Museum of Art, 2019
N.C. Wyeth (1882 0 1945), My Grandfather’s House, New England, ca. 1929, oil on canvas, 42 1/8 x 48”. The Phyllis and Jamie Wyeth Collection.
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), Zirngiebel House, Needham – Heavy Snow, ca. 1922, oil on canvas, 40 x 44”. Brandywine River Museum of Art, Bequest of Carolyn Wyeth, 1996
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), Winter, ca. 1913, oil on canvas, 47 x 38”. Needham History Center & Museum, MA Gift of Stimson Wyeth
“Paul Revere’s Ride” by NC Wyeth was painted here to illustrate the famous poem by Henry W. Longfellow. who is said to have known his grandparents and to have visited them in this Needham house.
Wyeth’s grandparents lived right next door where he spent his first 20 years. Even when living far away NC Wyeth felt nostalgic about South Street on the Charles River and wrote to his parents nearly every week, sometimes daily, for decades.
Wyeth had 5 living children when he moved back to Needham when the youngest, Andrew Wyeth, was only 4. His longing to return to Needham was turned on its head two years later when the children were homesick to their childhood home and woodlands in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
NC Wyeth lived to the age of 63 until his untimely death in 1945 in Chadds Ford, PA when his car stalled in the path of an oncoming train killing instantly both himself and his namesake grandson, age 3.
