Wyeth also enjoyed a national reputation as a muralist. His earliest mural commissions (Hotel Utica, Utica, New York, 1911, and Traymore Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1915) have been destroyed. In 1920 he created two Civil War battle scenes for the Missouri State Capitol (Jefferson City), the first in a long line of commissions he undertook in the 1920s and 1930s. Among them are murals for the Federal Reserve Bank, Boston; Westtown School, Westtown, Pennsylvania; First National Bank of Boston; Hotel Roosevelt and Fanklin Savings Bank, both in New York City; Hubbard Hall, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.; First Mechanics National Bank, Trenton, New Jersey; and Wilmington Savings Fund Society, Wilmington, Delaware. Many of these murals depict historical events, others such as The Giant for Westtown School and The Apotheosis of the Family have allegorical themes. In 1940 Wyeth accepted a commission from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York City, for an ambitious scheme illustrating Pilgrim life. The second phase of this cycle was incomplete at his death and finished by his son Andrew and son-in-law John McCoy. Most of Wyeth's murals have survived, but many are no longer at their original sites.

Throughout his career Wyeth created images for magazine advertisements and calendars. Several paintings commissioned by the Cream of Wheat Company in 1906-07 rank along with his best Western work. Later pictures advertised products of the American Tobacco Company, Aunt Jemima, Blue Buckle Overalls, Coca-Cola, General Electric, and Steinway & Sons, among others. For companies such as New York Life Insurance, Morrell & Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad he produced calendar and poster images. During both World Wars, Wyeth contributed patriotic images to government and private agencies such as the American Red Cross.

N.C. Wyeth Chadds Ford Landscape-July 1909 (Photograph #15)

N.C. Wyeth, Still Life with Onions (Photograph #16)

N.C. Wyeth William Penn. Man of Vision. Courage. Action. (Photograph #17)

N.C. Wyeth died at a railroad crossing in Chadds Ford in 1945, when an oncoming train hit his car. He had lived long enough to see his children excel in talents he had nurtured-Nathaniel as an inventor; Henriette, Carolyn and Andrew as painters; and Ann as a musician and composer. Andrew Wyeth's son James, also a painter, continues his grandfather's legacy.

The Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, contains the largest collection of N.C. Wyeth's artwork, and offers tours of his Chadds Ford home and studio. The museum, in conjunction with the Wyeth Foundation for American Art and Scala Publishers, Ltd., published N. C. Wyeth Catalogue, Raisonné of Paintings in 2008. Visitors to the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, can see many of the paintings Wyeth did of the Maine coast, where he spent summers from 1920 to 1945. The Delaware Art Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Philadelphia Free Library hold significant collections of his paintings. The Wyeths, The Letters of N. C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, edited by Betsy James Wyeth (Boston: Gambit, 1971: reprinted, Brandywine River Museum, 2008) is a collection of excerpts from Wyeth's substantial correspondence. In N.C. Wyeth, A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1998), David Michaelis presents a thorough account of his life.

N.C. Wyeth at work on mural (Photograph #18)

N.C. Wyeth, American Red Cross Poster (Photograph #19)

Ringing Out Liberty (Photograph #20)

N. C. Wyeth Biography page 1,page 2

CREDITS (15) N.C. Wyeth, Chadds Ford Landscape-July 1909, oil on canvas, 1909. Collection of the Brandywine River Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Wyeth, 1970. (16) N.C. Wyeth, Still Life with Onions, oil on canvas, ca. 1931. Collection of the Brandywine River Museum, purchased in memory of Clement R. Hoopes on behalf of his family and friends, 1980. (17) N.C. Wyeth, William Penn. Man of Vision. Courage. Action, oil on canvas, 1933. Collection of the Brandywine River Museum, gift of the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, 1997. (18) N.C. Wyeth at work on mural for First Mechanics National Bank, Trenton, New Jersey, ca. 1930. Photograph by Edward J. S. Seal. Collection of the Brandywine River Museum (19) N.C. Wyeth, American Red Cross Poster, oil on canvas ca. 1918. Private collection. (20) Ringing Out Liberty, poster and calendar design by N.C. Wyeth for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, ca. 1929. Calendar illustration collection of the Brandywine River Museum.

For more information, call (610) 388-2700 or send an email to: ncwyethcatalogue@brandywine.org Brandywine River Museum, U.S. Route 1 & PA Route100, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania 19317 Copyright © 2009 Brandywine Conservancy