Arty Farty Friday ~ N.C. Wyeth & Family

It's not difficult to identify mini-dynasties, of sorts, among some who make their marks in different spheres of life: political dynasties (Adams; Kennedy; Clinton?) Acting dynasties (Bridges; Douglas; Carradine; Redgrave) etc. Painting/illustration dynasties, in the USA, include the Wyeths.

N.C. Wyeth, in full Newell Convers Wyeth
(born October 22, 1882, Needham, Massachusetts — died October 19, 1945, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania), American illustrator and muralist.

Wyeth was raised on a farm, and he learned drafting and illustration in Boston before studying with the master illustrator Howard Pyle. He first found success in depicting the American West. During his career he contributed his memorable illustrations to more than 100 books, including a famous series of children’s classics, including Treasure Island, Kidnapped, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and The Black Arrow, and he also produced numerous murals in public buildings. He was the teacher of his son, the painter Andrew Wyeth. [N.C. Wyeth was grandfather of Jamie Wyeth - also a painter.]

My blog-post relating to N.C. Wyeth's son, Andrew, mentions that: His father was a benevolent tyrant, dominating his five offspring while encouraging them to be geniuses by allowing only the best music, the best poetry in the house. Andrew was his favorite, a "daddy's boy."

N.C. Wyeth, described, elsewhere, as a strapping, engaging man, was also said to have suffered from depression and questioned the direction of his life and career. He died on October 19, 1945, in Chadds Ford, when the car he was driving was hit by a train; the automobile also contained a young grandson, who perished as well.

From Wikipedia:

"Wyeth's exuberant personality and talent made him a standout student. A robust, powerfully built young man with strangely delicate hands, he ate a lot less than his size implied. He admired great literature, music, and drama, and he enjoyed spirited conversation"

"Wyeth created a stimulating household for his talented children Andrew Wyeth, Henriette Wyeth Hurd, Carolyn Wyeth, Ann Wyeth McCoy, and Nathaniel C. Wyeth. Wyeth was very sociable, and frequent visitors included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Hergesheimer, Hugh Walpole, Lillian Gish, and John Gilbert. According to Andrew, who spent the most time with his father on account of his sickly childhood, Wyeth was a strict but patient father who did not talk down to his children. His hard work as an illustrator gave his family the financial freedom to follow their own artistic and scientific pursuits. Andrew went on to become one of the foremost American artists of the second half of the 20th century, and both Henriette and Carolyn became artists also; Ann became an artist and composer. Nathaniel became an engineer for DuPont and worked on the team that invented the plastic soda bottle. Henriette and Ann married two of Wyeth's protégés, Peter Hurd and John W. McCoy. Wyeth is the grandfather of artists Jamie Wyeth and Michael Hurd and the musician Howard Wyeth.[14]"

For some fine examples of N.C. Wyeth's illustrations, please do take a look at the large versions contained in a blog post by Nate Taylor - HERE.

I'll include just one of N.C.'s magazine cover illustrations, from 1921:

In 1945, Wyeth and his grandson (Nathaniel C. Wyeth's son) were killed when the automobile they were riding in was struck by a freight train at a railway crossing near his Chadds Ford home. At the time, Wyeth had been working on an ambitious series of murals for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company depicting the Pilgrims at Plymouth, a series completed by Andrew Wyeth and John McCoy.

No time of birth is available for N.C. Wyeth. A 12 noon chart for the day of his birth indicates:

"... exuberant personality...robust, powerfully built..." these observations, I'd say relate to natal Jupiter in harmonious trine to his Sun and Mercury on the cusp of Libra/Scorpio.

"...also said to have suffered from depression and questioned the direction of his life and career" - relates, in my opinion, to natal Mars and North Node in occasionally paranoid and intense Scorpio.

There's some orchestrated Fixed sign opposition going on between Fixed signs Scorpio and Taurus, this could account for the description of N.C. Wyeth as a "benevolent tyrant" - extremely fixed ideas on the way his children should develop.

Natal chart for N.C.'s son Andrew is available at the link provided in the post. There's evidence of a Watery Cancerian inheritance from the father - a softer version, strengthened considerably by Leo input and an Aries Moon. Jupiter on his ascendant could also be an inheritance from Dad, a whisper from the Jupiter trine Sun in his father's chart.

 Left to right:  Jamie, Andrew, N.C.

As for Jamie Wyeth (James Browning Wyeth, born July 6, 1946, he might be fodder for some future Arty Farty post; I can see, even from here, that the Watery Cancerian element has seeped through!

Arty Farty Friday ~ Andrew Wyeth

There's no lack of artists with natal Sun in zodiac sign Cancer. I've already featured some of them in past Arty Farty Friday posts. With relevant links, these are: Kahlo, Hockney, Degas, Calder, Hopper.

Still to tackle are Cancerians: Chagall, Whistler (thought I'd "done" them but can't locate the posts), and Rembrandt; and.....there's another Cancerian artist, much loved in the USA:

Andrew Wyeth (1917 - 2009).

Sources for biographical details:

An obituary piece By Henry Allen and Bart BarnesWashington Post Staff Writers, January 17, 2009.
And from a brief Astrodatabank bio.

Andrew was born in a Pennsylvania farming village. He was a frail boy, the youngest of five children. His mother was Pennsylvania Dutch with family in Lancaster County and his father was Swiss. His father was a benevolent tyrant, dominating his five offspring while encouraging them to be geniuses by allowing only the best music, the best poetry in the house. Andrew was his favorite, a "daddy's boy."

On his 22nd birthday, Andrew met Betsy James. Against his father's wishes, they married in May 1940. One ruler had replaced another. Betsy assumed control over his life and work. He relied on her fine critical eye, but needed periods of escape.

In 1945, his father stalled his car on a railroad crossing in Chadds Ford, and a train killed him and his daughter's 4-year-old son. ..."When he died, I was just a clever watercolorist - lots of swish and swash," Wyeth said. Soon he produced the unsettling tempera "Winter 1946," (below) in which a boy runs down a winter hill, casting a wild lurch of a shadow on dead grass. As it happens, on the other side of the hill is the railroad crossing.
(NOTE: There is a correction to detail of the above in the comments below).



Andrew Wyeth's "signature" style was "in making unhappiness beautiful, in the manner of Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, Ernest Hemingway or Miles Davis".

He became more reclusive as he grew older and famous, though he was said to be a tease and a mimic with friends, a good story-teller.

His paintings give away his inner solitude, and possibly some repressed anger.


His style is defined as realist but because the objects in his paintings are metaphors, he can also be considered an abstractionist.






In the years between 1970-1985, Wyeth secretly painted a Pennsylvania neighbour, Helga Testorf, often in the nude. He had completed 65 paintings of Helga when his wife discovered his secret, almost destroying their marriage.

Wyeth's work was never beloved by critics, but was loved and defended by Americans because of the way his paintings made them feel - about themselves and their country -a country not of the 21st century, but one fast disappearing.

The obituary piece linked above begins:

Andrew Wyeth, best-loved painter of wistfulness, rural bleakness, menace, Puritanical solitude and an America lost to 20th-century dry rot, died yesterday morning in his sleep at the Wyeth family estate in Chadds Ford, Pa., between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del. He was 91. He died in just the sort of weather he loved, the empty cold and the sharp sunlight of the dead of winter.....................

ASTROLOGY



Data from Astrodatabank.

I'll not ramble on about Wyeth's chart, I'll pick out what I see as the astro-signature of his unique art style.
It's not exactly in his sensitive Cancerian Sun and Mercury, it's more to be found in Saturn/Neptune/Venus conjoined in Leo and semi-sextile Pluto in Cancer.

Translation: Saturn (hard, realistic coldness; also business sense). Neptune (creativity) Venus (art). Pluto (darkness or death, obsession). All are ingredients of his style, a blend of the astrological input.

The cluster of Leo planets is in helpful sextile to Jupiter (expansive, publication) in Gemini (communication) exactly on the ascendant, and translates to Wyeth's ability to communicate the feeling in his work to a large audience.


Christina's World



One of Wyeth's best known paintings:

The woman in the painting was the artist's neighbor in Maine, who, crippled by polio, "was limited physically but by no means spiritually." Wyeth: "The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless."

Albinos Study



Knapsack



Crows







Ground Hog Day



From Smithsonian website~

Wyeth also says that “intensity—painting emotion into objects,” is what he cares about most. His 1959 painting Groundhog Day, for instance, appears to portray a cozy country kitchen. Only gradually does the viewer become aware that there’s something off, something uncomfortable, strangely surreal, about the painting. The only cutlery on the table is a knife. Outside the window, a barbed-wire fence and jagged log wrapped in a chain dominate the landscape. As Kathleen Foster notes in her catalog essay, the painting adds up to a portrait of Wyeth’s neighbor, the volatile, gun-loving Karl Kuerner, and his troubled wife, Anna. Far from cozy, the painting suggests the violence and even madness that often simmers beneath the surface of daily life.

Day Dream