America’s Storyteller
A new show at Menconi + Schoelkopf offers an important trio of N.c.wyeth works that have never been on the market
A new show at Menconi + Schoelkopf offers an important trio of N.C. Wyeth works that have never been on the market
N.C.wyeth is as important to the canon of American storytelling as Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. And yet Wyeth never wrote a single book.the painter certainly illustrated many—including some classics, such as Treasure Island, Robin Hood and The Last of the Mohicans—and today his works are some of the most recognizable in American art. But “painter” doesn’t begin to encapsulate all that Wyeth accomplished in his career.
At the Newyork City gallery Menconi + Schoelkopf, another word better captures all that the artist contributed to American art: storyteller. “it all came down to his ability to tell a story,” says gallery co-owner Andrew Schoelkopf. “that’s what we plan to focus on and convey in our new show of his work. He could tell a story through his paintings, and he was loved and adored for the stories he told.”
Now open at the gallery is N.c.wyeth: Storyteller, a new
show featuring 15 works by the famous painter.the exhibition was timed to coincide with a Wyeth renaissance led by a major new exhibition at Maine’s Portland Museum of Art and co-organized by the Brandywine River Museum of Art, which has created a swell of appreciation for the artist and illustrator, who was father to Andrew Wyeth and grandfather to Jamie Wyeth.
Storyteller is headlined by three important Wyeth works that come from the Mccoy Collection. John Mccoy Sr. was an artist himself and a student under Wyeth. In
1935 he married Wyeth’s youngest daughter, Ann, Andrew’s sister. Naturally, the two families were very close and artwork was traded, gifted and purchased between them. Several paintings were passed down through the generations to Mccoy’s grandchildren, who are now presenting them at Menconi + Schoelkopf. “one of the pieces was acquired in 1965. The collector was graduating college and he decided to acquire another picture to add to what the family already had,” Schoelkopf says. “several of these pieces have been in the family for nearly 100 years, so we’re very excited to be showing them. these are certainly some of the most import Wyeth artworks to be offered in the last couple of decades.”
Works in the show include Indian Spearman (Spearfishing), a
1934 oil on canvas that commands a huge presence at 53 inches wide. “the enormous scale of the painting and the amazing composition certainly informs your viewing of the picture. this was a gift to a family member very early on. It does resemble some famous concepts he’d painted before, including In the Crystal Depths, which he had painted in 1907 for Outing Magazine,” says Schoelkopf. “in this work, it is a grand summation of Wyeth’s style. It’s very dramatic in a way that only Wyeth is capable of doing…it’s consistent with his earlier works of Native Americans. He painted them very peacefully, as very loving and honorable figures, which was not always the way they were represented by other artists of the time.and the way he paints the clarity of the scene, it has an almost mystical quality to it with ribbons of color that can be seen in the water.”
Another key painting from the show is Wash Day on the Maine Coast, an oil work from 1934.The image shows a woman hanging clothes to dry on a
windblown line as a bustling harbor is tucked into the coastline behind her.“it offers a complete narrative of life on the coast,” Schoelkopf says, adding that it will be very new to most admirers of Wyeth’s work simply because it’s been in a private collection for so long.“it was exhibited as early as 1934 and it did receive some contemporary press, but dropped out of the public eye because it’s a [Mccoy] family picture. It truly is one of his great accomplishments, though. His ability to make an everyday experience—the hanging of the laundry—so engaging, so full of life, so romanticized, is one of the unique characteristics of his work.”
The third work from the Mccoy Collection is 1920’s The Duel on the Beach, which was an illustration for the Scribner’s Classic Westward Ho!, written by Charles Kingsley.“these three pictures are really sensational,” says Schoelkopf.“they are really special pictures and the fact that they are for sale is an extraordinary opportunity.” Other works in the show are Two Hunters and Canoe from 1911 and The Decoy, an action scene from 1913, as well as one important loan to the exhibition, The Homecoming, showing a soldier returning to the family farm after serving in World War II. The Homecoming was painted in 1945, not long before Wyeth’s tragic death in a train accident in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
N.c.wyeth: Storyteller will be on view at Menconi + Schoelkopf in Newyork September 10 through October 25.