A Child's Garden of Images

N.C. Wyeth painted the stories we read

“Absconding with the Treasure” by N.C. Wyeth from the book, “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson

Hearing “Adventures of the Lone Ranger” on the radio was the highlight of my afternoons as a kid, fresh home from the torturous boredom of school. As I heard the thundering hoof beats and the sound of gunfire, I saw every scene vividly in my imagination and knew exactly what Tonto looked like and could describe in detail the Lone Ranger’s secret rock hideout.

But years later, when radio drowned beneath the wave of television, none of what I had seen in my mind matched what I saw on the screen. It was felt as a betrayal. Somebody had stolen my mind’s beautiful images and replaced them with pale, makeshift imitations. I realized then that illustrating scenes in a book carried the same hazard. How dare anyone paint a passage from a story and try to pass it off as being what I pictured in my mind.

But there was one artist who did exactly that.

Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth had the uncanny ability to see stories exactly as I had, even better than I had. Not only did his illustrations depict scenes from books in ways that matched my expectations. They positively brought those scenes to life.

From the book “Men Against the Sea” by Nordhoff and Hall in their 3-volume “Bounty Trilogy”. After the mutiny on the Bounty, Captain Bligh successfully guided a lifeboat and crew 4,160 miles across the Pacific Ocean to safety. It’s a true story and Wyeth’s vivid imagination captured it perfectly.

“I surrendered to a world of my imagination, re-enacting all those wonderful tales my father would read aloud to me.”

Artist, Andrew Wyeth, revealing the influence of his dad, N.C. Wyeth

Wyeth studied under some of the greatest painters and illustrators of the young 20th Century. When he was 21 years old, The Saturday Evening Post commissioned him to illustrate a western story and one of his tutors urged him to go west to learn the culture of the cowboy and so he did.

An illustration of a bushwhacker from Wyeth’s western experience. Wyeth in his studio at age 20, in 1903, and another one of his imaginative scenes from the old west where he had gone in 1904 to study cowboy culture.

As far as I’m concerned, N.C. Wyeth is the greatest American illustrator. During his lifetime, he created over 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books as well as producing numerous posters and murals. The fact that he was prolific in no way detracts from the stunning beauty of many of his works. His talent drew memorable visuals out of mere words on a printed page and fired the imaginations of readers of all ages. I, certainly, was one.

Images such as these render scenes created for books in such unforgettable ways that you’re able to absorb and savor them even apart from the stories.

It’s been said many times that actors who play serious roles on stage or in films, long in their hearts to be geniuses of comedy and that comedic performers secretly wish for serious roles. Wyeth, who was a gifted natural illustrator, desired to be recognized as a serious artist and expressed frustration at having to ply his talent illustrating the works of others. He despised the commercialism on which he was dependent.

“I have bitched myself with the accursed success in skin-deep pictures and illustrations,” he said. He complained that an illustration had to be made with the limitations of engravers and printers in mind constantly.

“This fact alone kills that underlying inspiration to create thought. Instead of expressing that inner feeling, you express the outward thought or imitation of that feeling.”

But forgive me if I differ just a bit with that.

The illustrations of N.C. Wyeth may not be in the same elevated schools as the art of Monet, Kandinsky or Picasso but his images connect to the heart and mind with equal impact. Especially to the hearts and minds of older children. Illustration is reflecting life as an artist sees it. Art is rearranging or reimagining it as an artist wants to make it.

“Painting and illustration,” he said in 1908, “cannot be mixed —- one cannot merge from one into the other.”

The illustrations of Wyeth are not photographs, they are not subtle and they are not suggestions. They are stories.

Wyeth was born in Massachussets in 1882, the same year that outlaw Robert Ford shot and killed Jesse James. He settled in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvanian in 1906 with his wife of two years. Together they raised five talented children. among them the famous American painter, Andrew Wyeth.

In 1911, he painted a series of illustrations for an edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, thought by many to be his finest work. In any case, it made him famous and earned sufficient money to pay for his house and studio.

Young people have long been fascinated by Wyeth’s illustrations. Being one myself long ago, I would return to them time after time, long after reading the particular book or story. They simply lured you into them. To this day they remain amazing.

“The Giant” 1922.

Like most of us, Wyeth saw faces and figures in the clouds. In one of these he expanded the fantasy into an enormous, ancient giant, dressed in animal skins and carrying a club over his shoulder. The imagined, cloud-built giant is seen simultaneously by a group of six children on a beach. Five of the children are Wyeth’s, including a blond Andrew standing nearest the sea.

It can be a source of amusement that people elevate themselves in their own minds to levels above their actual mental ability. Being able to recognize Beethoven or Mozart after just a few notes pumps new air into one’s ego and inflates a sense of superiority and self esteem. Calling Wyeth’s work “mere illustration” does the same thing.

His work was a child’s imagination revealed in colors on a page

Is it art? I don’t know. But it comprises a wealth of worthy experience and the talent to convey it to others which is what art purportedly does.

In October, 1945, Wyeth and his young grandson (Nathaniel’s child) were killed in their car by a freight train at a crossing near his home at Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania. His home and studio were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997, and are open to the public. His studio is just as he left it. The palette he was using on his last day sits beside his last canvas. He was 63 years old.

N.C. Wyeth, 1922