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This time of the year, a weekend drive through the Brandywine River Valley to Chadds Ford has more to offer than the usual natural beauty of a countryside in autumn. The Brandywine River Museum has some tasty fall treats, including a major exhibition of the early watercolors of Andrew Wyeth.
In addition to "Andrew Wyeth: Early Years," which runs through Nov. 20, the museum also has on view a charming new acquisition – a display of weapons owned and used by N.C. Wyeth as props in illustrating tales of rogues and adventurers.
The Wyeth watercolors are dated between the late 1930s and the early 1950s and aptly demonstrate why the artist’s reputation was built on that medium. That national acclaim came following a show of watercolors at the Macbeth Gallery in New York in 1937. Wyeth was compared to and became heir to his own artistic hero, Winslow Homer. Both depicted country life, folk and landscape as well as the coastal shores of Maine.
Today and for some time, Wyeth works in tempera, a painstaking technique that demands an incredible work ethic.
Coming fresh from a Homer retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Wyeth palette has a familiar combination of whites and blues contrasting with rich earth tones. Many of the other works at the Brandywine – there are more than 50 – show a unique Wyeth perspective on composition, subject matter and technique, which those closest to the painter have called "wondrous strange."
Often with Wyeth shows at the Brandywine, the items are either newly executed or have been recycled from other curatorial concepts and forced into a new context. This show, however, was organized by the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, N.H., and includes many works from private collections that were never previously exhibited. The Currier also hosted the first Wyeth museum show back in 1939.
Also on view is the recent acquisition "View of the Brandywine: Gilpin’s Paper Mill" by Thomas Doughty, which was painted in the late 1820s. The work fits with the Brandywine Conservancy’s mission, which includes displaying regional landscape art. According to museum notes, "As a forerunner to Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School, Doughty was one of the earliest American artists to devote himself exclusively to landscape painting. For the young, aspiring artist from Philadelphia, the Brandywine Valley offered attractive and logical subject matter. His depictions of the area are gentle, picturesque, natural settings with only a hint of drama."
Hudson River School landscapes, in contrast, would carry intense drama contained in the composition, the climate, source of light and other natural phenomena such as waterfalls, clouds or rivers.
The "View of the Brandywine: Gilpin’s Paper Mill" is along the river in Delaware and was the first paper mill in the state. It was built in 1787 on the family estate Kentmere, named after the Gilpin estate in England (the newly expanded and renovated Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington is on Kentmere Parkway). In 1816, Thomas Gilpin patented and operated the first endless-sheet, roll-fed paper machine in the country. After a series of fires and floods, the property was sold in 1831. The painting is on view on the first-floor gallery.
Over in the conservancy’s N.C. Wyeth Studio is another recent museum acquisition. Jamie Wyeth, Andrew’s son and N.C.’s grandson, donated a collection of more than 60 pieces of weaponry. The arms include flintlock rifles, Russian army rifles from World War I, bayonets and knives. N.C. used them in numerous illustrations of works from the American frontier and wars ranging from the Civil War to World War I.
The most prominent piece identified by the museum is a long rifle marked with the name of its maker, Philip Beck, a Lancaster County gunsmith who worked in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Part of the interest in the collection is the meticulous care N.C. took with illustration to make the pieces accurate and therefore all the more powerful.
"Andrew Wyeth: Early Years"
Through Nov. 20
The Brandywine River Museum
U.S. Route 1, Chadds Ford
610-388-2700
www.brandywinemuseum.org
Adults, $8; seniors, students with identification and ages 6 to 12, $5; and free for children under 6.
