We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,607,072.73 | Books Available: 783,396 | Members Online: 89

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - N. C. Wyeth : A Biography

N C Wyeth A Biography
Author: David Michaelis

An American painting dynasty is portrayed in this huge, riveting biography of N. C. Wyeth. —         His name summons up our earliest images of the beloved books we read as children. His illustrations for Scribner's Illustrated Classics (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Last of the Mohicans, The Yearling) ar...  more »e etched into the collective memory of generations of readers. He was hailed as the greatest American illustrator of his day. For forty-three years, starting in 1902, he painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and murals as well as illustrations for a long shelf of world literature. Yet he proclaimed "the uselessness of clinging to illustration and hoping to make it a great art." He judged himself a failure, believing that illustration was of no importance.

        Despite the darkness of his temperament, he was a towering figure of gargantuan appetites and physical power. His passions were rooted in the nineteenth century. He made adventure, nature, and "the vastness of things" his earliest personal themes. America was his canvas.

        David Michaelis's biography of N. C. Wyeth tells the story of his family through four generations. It is

a family saga that begins and ends with the accidental deaths of small boys, a gothic tale that shows how N.C., while learning to live a safe and familiar domestic life, endangered himself and his children by concealing part of the family legacy--depression, suicide, incest.

        We see how his mother's emotional instability and his father's strictness set the stage for his profoundly divided personality. He found in fatherhood the foremost expression of his character--trying to create in the Wyeth homestead his dream of childhood at its most enchanting. He held his children enthralled through their adult lives. He persuaded his inventor son, Nat, to live at home, shepherded his daughter Ann's career as a composer, and taught his three other children--Henriette, Carolyn, and Andrew (N.C. was Andrew's only teacher)--to paint.

        The illustrations that N. C. Wyeth undervalued are now regarded as American classics--the paintings that appeared in Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Last of the Mohicans are in museums, joining, as John Updike wrote, "the mainstream of American easel painting."

        His work lives. The artist himself is brought alive in David Michaelis's fully realized portrait of this huge-spirited, deeply complicated man, his family, and an America that was quickly vanishing.

ISBN-13: 9780679426264
ISBN-10: 0679426264
Publication Date: 10/1998
Pages: 555
Rating:

Currently 4/5 Stars.

4 stars, based on 1 rating

Publisher: Knopf
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Read All 1 Book Reviews of "N C Wyeth A Biography"

Please Log in to Rate these Book Reviews

Mary D. (readstoclem) reviewed N. C. Wyeth : A Biography on 11/11/2006 + 118 more book reviews

The "greatest American illustrator of his day," Wyeth was a student of Howard Pyle and the father of Andrew Wyeth. He lived an almost medieval existence on his estate with his children and students around him. This biography contains a number of illustrations of the fascinating and complicated man and his works.

Share/Like this Review?

Read All Book Reviews of "N C Wyeth A Biography"

Genres:

Arts & Photography >> Individual Artists >> ( V-Z ) >> Wyeth, N.C.
Biographies & Memoirs >> Arts & Literature >> Artists, Architects & Photographers
Biographies & Memoirs >> General
Biographies & Memoirs >> Historical >> United States >> General

Back to the Top ↑

Search - N. C. Wyeth : A Biography

Please Log in to Rate these Book Reviews

Loading...