Wow! In case you missed that, let me repeat myself. Wow!
You may ask, why all the excitement and exclamation points?
Last week, I caught a sneak peek of a monumental N.C. Wyeth oil on canvas mural housed at nearby artist Jamie Wyeth’s Point Lookout Farm, which straddles the Pennsylvania/Delaware border.
Wyeth non-typical use of color in his largest mural. (BILL RETTEW/MEDIANEWS GROUP)
I don’t know if my eyes bulged out more when I first witnessed that explosive mural or some of the most beautiful rolling hills in the Brandywine Valley on the drive over.
Later this year, the Brandywine Museum of Art will be offering tours, and you too will be able to enter the artist’s property and catch a glimpse of N.C Wyeth’s largest work, which measures a massive 60 by 19 feet.
“Apotheosis of the Family” hung behind the tellers at Wilmington Savings Fund Society for three-quarters of a century. It was completed in 1932 during the Great Depression. The bank wanted to show that it survived economic turmoil, with the painting depicting an idyllic atmosphere and a simpler time, yet on a grand scale.
Jamie, grandson of N.C., helped preserve the painting and built the circular barn on his farm property to publicly showcase it.
As the title suggests, this might be the climax of the Wyeth Family. N.C. substituted family members for those heroes in the novels he so boldly illustrated.
There is N.C. and wife Carolyn upfront and center, Andrew with a tensed bow, daughter and toddler Carolyn, son Nat, daughter Henriette, and a child in infancy, possibly a baby who had died young.
N.C. used artistic license and while Andrew, Jamie’s father, was likely 15 in 1932, his daughter Carolyn was shown much younger in her 20s than how she was depicted.
Tour-goers are in for a real feast for those bulging eyes. You will be treated to an inside look at Wyeth’s horse stable, which houses three retired racehorses, whose stallion sire, Union Rags, won the 2012 Belmont Stakes.
Walking through the stable before entering and viewing the painting is a way of honoring Jamie’s late wife, Phyllis Mills Wyeth, who was an accomplished Thoroughbred breeder and owner of Union Rags, and her family farm.
Exit the stable and those overwhelming rolling hills of the expansive farm explode as the circular barn suddenly comes into view.
Walk on more than a dozen millstones Jamie collected from all over the world, along with Delaware River Gravel, then ease open the semi-circular sliding doors and there it is.
The last thing you would expect to see on the wall of a barn, on a farm with a thin, mile-long driveway, is a huge painting, but there it is…
A patio was added since Jamie didn’t want it to look like a silo and columns were put up to match the farm’s original bank barn, said Caroline Ryan, Wyeth’s assistant and farm manager.
I took my tour with the Brandywine Museum’s Senior Curator, Amanda Burdan. She has spent dozens of hours with the mural and was still more excited than I to look up.
Burdan talked about the differences between N.C.’s well-known work as an illustrator versus as a muralist. He used bolder, brighter paints with murals–the art jumps out at you.
There is so much going on. The eyes move back and forth, up and down. They wander. It’s like watching a movie on IMAX, with the screen still.
The concept of displaying the flat mural in a round barn was the idea of Ryan. She said it is not unusual for an equestrian barn.
You don’t need to walk along the huge painting to view it all at once. Instead, even from close up, you can see the whole mural with one brilliant flash.
Burdan compared the work to N.C.’s illustrations.
“There was never so complicated an illustration,” she said. “It’s like the illustrations for a whole book put together.
“We’re looking at how and why an illustrator becomes a muralist.”
There is so much going on.
All four seasons are depicted with cotton-like trees of spring and ice-cold winter. All types of life, from infants to the very old, are painted. Foundations of industry are there, along with hunting, gathering, fishing, and the raising of animals. There are meadows and those famous N.C.Wyeth clouds. The beginnings of civilizations are evident.
Burdan told me that N.C. wrote in a letter that he was inspired by the poet Virgil, whose poems are set in an Arcadian world where people lived in perfect harmony with the land.
She said that Jamie’s farm reflects some of this. Rather than live in a Manhattan skyscraper, he chooses to live along the Brandywine, at a working farm with animals.
The Brandywine Conservancy’s goal, like Jamie’s, according to Burdan: “Civilization is going to progress, but we can do so with as little impact on the land as possible.”
Restoring the painting was a three-year process. N.C. painted it on five panels in his Chadds Ford studio, then rolled it up and transferred it to the bank. The adhesive used was white lead paint and was toxic. It was difficult to remove from the wall. The conservators had to be protected from the flaking lead paint, although it is safe now.
The mural was repaired on the floor, with conservators lying on their stomachs, the opposite of Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel.
Burdan told me that Michelangelo complained of pain while working from scaffolding below the ceiling.
“If only he had thought about rolling out a canvas on the floor, he would have saved himself a lot of neck pain,” quipped Burdan.
N.C. modified his home studio to paint murals since they take a lot more room.
He added bigger windows, electrified the room for night work, added space and made a special staircase all the way to the top, while using photographs to project slides onto canvas.
Now a National Historic Landmark, N.C.’s studio is owned and operated by the Brandywine Museum of Art with seasonal guided tours.
It’s a glorious painting and my photos don’t do it or the farm justice. Spend half a day and visit the Wyeth Family paintings and so much more at the Brandywine Museum, walk around the creek, view the mural and grab a bite at the new Hanks. See you there.
The Brandywine Museum of Art expects to open “The Mural Experience” tours by late fall. The first stop will be to N.C.’s studio, where the entire mural process will be examined. Then a shuttle will take tour-goers to Jamie’s barn and the mural.
For more information, go to the Brandywine Website, brandywine.org/mural
You can sign up to be the first to hear about bookings for the 2025 tour dates at the site.
Bill Rettew is a semi-regular columnist and staff writer. His eyes have fully recovered until the next visit. The best way to contact him is at brettew@dailylocal.com
Source: Berkshire mont