This Day in Art History (N. C. Wyeth, Painting Patriarch, Dies in Tragic Train Accident)

Oct. 19, 1945—Forty-three years to the day that the creative, adult part of his life began when he stepped off a train in the Brandywine River Valley, painter and illustrator N. C. Wyeth died when a train collided with his car a few miles from his home and studio in Chadds Ford, PA.

A powerful, sometimes overwhelming influence in his family, the 63-year-old Newell Convers Wyeth left his survivors—a wife and five grown children—devastated by the loss of him and the grandson/namesake in the car with him. 

For years, they—and local residents who had grown used to his longtime presence—wondered to what extent the accident represented a culmination of his last few years of mounting melancholy and self-doubt over an inability to be taken seriously as a producer of fine paintings rather than of popular commercial art.

Above all, several questions lingered afterward about the passing of this patriarch with three children and a grandson who followed him into the painting trade:

*Why did he take his grandson out of the car, point to two men husking corn in the morning light, and tell him, within earshot of onlookers: “Newell, you won’t see this again—remember this”?

*Had he been conducting an affair with daughter-in-law Caroline? If so, was a child conceived from that relationship, as local rumor had it?

*When Wyeth came to the railroad tracks, had he been blinded by the morning light, suffered a heart attack—or intentionally committed suicide?

Growing up in the 1960s. I never imagined that the artist behind the Scribner illustrated classics I was devouring (Robert Louis Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper, and Jules Verne) could have been involved in an incident easily a match for the mystery and drama I was reading. 

Nor could I imagine in the mid-1980s, when I read the breathless accounts of the secret cache of nude “Helga” paintings by son Andrew, that the whiff of scandal had clung not only to him but to his father and even grandmother?

The mystery surrounding Wyeth’s death is ironic, considering that so many other aspects of his life were so extensively documented. Not only is his Chadds Ford studio intact, but he left a trove of correspondence culled by Andrew’s wife Betsy and published as The Wyeths:The Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901-1945—a thumping volume of more than 800 pages.

Figuring out what led to the accident is difficult, as the following needs to be weighed:

*Wyeth, when he pointed out the cornhuskers to his grandson, may have been urging him to absorb the physical elements of every experience—something he constantly urged his sons to do—or he may have been voicing his last desperate thoughts;

*Wyeth may well have been having an affair with Caroline, but a pregnancy was less likely, concluded David Michaelis in his 1998 biography of the painter—and, in any case, a child from that liaison would not necessarily have led Wyeth to take his own life;

*Wyeth may well have had a heart attack, since, with more than 300 pounds on his 6-ft., 1-in. frame, he had become badly overweight; but, on the other hand, the additional pounds may also have contributed to a helplessness that preceded suicide.

Moreover, suicide would not have been out of character for a man traumatized by a mother who was overprotective and chronically depressed. When not boosting his artistic inclinations, Hattie Wyeth manipulated him into feelings of guilt, and N.C. adopted the same behavior with his own children—instilling his artistic precepts on the one hand while building more space for his children on his property even after they married so he could control their destinies into adulthood.

So far, what I have written explains why Wyeth’s life was tragic. But we remember him because, despite his fears about its ultimate merit, his work was indeed distinguished.

For starters, the lucrative commissions that Wyeth disparaged (“You’ll grow out of that,” he responded when Betsy told him how much he admired them)—his illustrations for Scribers—enriched the texts on which he worked, adding elements not always readily apparent from the written word. For instance, Robert Louis Stevenson described Jim Hawkins’ departure from home tersely in Treasure Island. But Wyeth’s illustration of the scene depicts Mrs. Hawkins looking away in tears, while Jim walking into the foreground with a blank expression that scarcely conceals his anxiety for the future.

This and other works benefit from a realism so powerful that, for example, Wyeth kept costumes, cutlasses, and flintlocks in his studio for reference and inspiration. The works show up to even better advantage on the walls of the Brandywine River Museum of Art, as the book illustrations are at heart smaller reproductions of larger paintings.

Like his teacher, Norman Pyle, and Norman Rockwell, Wyeth was a master of narrative art whose work, unlike that of so many contemporaries, endures more than a century after their original creation. His versatility extends beyond the printed page, as he also created murals on display in the Federal Reserve Bank, Boston, Hotel Roosevelt and Franklin Savings Bank, both in New York City, as well as magazine advertisements and calendars.

It may take a while, but in time Wyeth may also be remembered for his late-career paintings as well, and not just indirectly, as the father of Andrew and grandfather of Jamie Wyeth.