N. C. Wyeth was one of America's greatest illustrators and the founder of a dynasty of artists that continues to enrich the American scene. This collection of letters, written from his eighteenth year to his tragic death at sixty-one, constitutes in effect his intimate autobiography, and traces and development and flowering of the "Wyeth tradition" over the course of several generations. -- Amazon.com.

Recounts the coming of the Pilgrims to America, with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

"A revelation. No one will ever view Andrew Wyeth's apparently tranquil works the same way again after reading this vivid and astonishing portrait of the turbulent, driven man who paints them. Richard Meryman has written a wonderful book." - Geoffrey C. Ward At its most fundamental level, this stunning and unique biography describes a distinguished painter's enterprise of transmitting emotion onto a flat surface. It explores all the factors that have combined to create Andrew Wyeth -- his childhood in a hothouse of creativity; his hypersensitivity; his formidable wife; his identification with people marginalized and misunderstood -- all which have made him an American icon. In the process, his realist works in watercolor and tempera, including the famous "Christina's World," have gained him a special and secure niche in the history of American art. The book is a portrait of obsession -- how single-mindedness has affected Wyeth's relationships and transformed his world into a realm of secrecy and fervid imagination. Those who read this book will never look at Wyeth's work as they did before. It reveals the artist's dark depths, as well as the ruthless, angry, child/man fantasist who paints the basic brutalities of existence -- death and madness --that vibrate eerily beneath his pictures' calm surfaces. Richard Meryman's narrative is almost novelistic, with its larger-than-life characters and subplots: the tragedy of C.C. Wyeth; Betsy Wyeth's campaign for independence and individuality; the byzantine 15-year-long drama of the Helga paintings; the eccentric and creative Wyeth clan; and the idiosyncratic land and people of Maine and Pennsylvania. Based on 30 years of research, frequent visits and countless conversations with the artist, his family, friends, admirers and critics, Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life is the only book about the man and the artist that gets behind his carefully guarded screen, tells the full story of his life and reveals his complex personality and the motivations for his paintings.

An enchanting collection of fantastical and colorful paintings by four American Realism painters--Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, and Wyeth's son and grandson--examines the relationship among these artists and suggests how illustration and the fine arts intersect in their work. 12,500 first printing.

In 1948 Andrew Wyeth produced what would become one of the most iconic paintings in American art: a desolate landscape featuring a woman lying in a field, that he called "Christina's World." The woman in the painting, Christina Olson, lived in Cushing, Maine, where Wyeth and his wife kept a summer house. She suffered from polio, and was paralyzed from the waist down; Wyeth was moved to portray her when he saw her one day crawling through the field towards her house. "Christina's World" was to become one of the most well-loved and most scorned works of the twentieth century, igniting heated arguments about parochialism, sentimentality, kitsch and elitism that have continued to dog the art world and Wyeth's own reputation, even after the artist's death in 2009. An essay by MoMA curator Laura Hoptman revisits the genesis of the painting, discussing Wyeth's curious focus, over the course of his career, on a deliberately delimited range of subjects and exploring the mystery that continues to surround the enigmatic painting.

"For decades, Andrew and Jamie Wyeth have provided a continuous backdrop against which the twists and turns of American art can be compared, contrasted, and benchmarked. By approaching the Wyeths and their art with a specificity that transcends content and biography, Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio provides readers with the opportunity to move beyond a visceral reaction and toward an understanding of the artists' work, media, mindset, and studio practice. Readers will be able to assess their predilection for the images in a more nuanced way, underpinning their reaction to an emotionally charged image with knowledge and practical understanding"--

he Wyeth family - including Andrew, his father N.C and son Jamie - were one of the most significant art dynasties in America. In 1982, a gang of thieves decided to steal an original Wyeth painting for their 'retirement' and engaged a professional cat burglar to carry out the robbery. The theft resulted in the loss of 15 paintings from the Wyeth estate, with initial reports valuing the stolen works at around £550,000 - today, those paintings would be worth millions of dollars. The search for the paintings takes the investigators throughout the United States and involves dangerous thieves, gamblers, drug dealers and murderers.