N.C. Wyeth's Men of Concord

Thoreau Fishing
N. C. Wyeth, 1936
Oil on hardboard, 38½ x 33 inches
Private collection
Illustrations from Men of Concord by Henry David Thoreau; ©1936, and renewed 1964 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Photographer: Tim Barnwell Photography

N. C. Wyeth’s Men of Concord will bring together for the first time in nearly eighty years the twelve original panels N. C. Wyeth painted for the book, Men of Concord and Some Others, as Portrayed in the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1936). The exhibition, on view in the Wallace Kane Gallery, will also include charcoal drawings, watercolors, and additional artwork related to the series, including sketches created by Andrew Wyeth as illustrations for the book. Christine Podmaniczky, Curator of the N. C. Wyeth Collections and Historic Properties at the Brandywine River Museum of Art and author of the catalogue raisonné on the artist, is serving as Consulting Curator.

Drawing upon important research by Consulting Curator Podmaniczky, the exhibition will also examine Wyeth’s working process for the panel paintings. For each work in the series, Wyeth began with exploratory drawings and sketches before developing a final composition in charcoal. The composition drawings were photographed, and glass lantern slides were created. Wyeth projected the slides onto large panels and developed the final painting from the projection. Some of these drawings, charcoal sketches, watercolors, and glass lantern slides will be featured in the exhibition to help visitors understand Wyeth’s artistic process.

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Concord Free Public Library. Concurrently, the William Munroe Special Collections of the Concord Free Public Library will feature From Thoreau’s Seasons to Men of Concord: N. C. Wyeth Inspired in the Library Art Gallery. This exhibition, opening April 15, 2016, will explore N. C. Wyeth’s fascination with Henry David Thoreau—in Wyeth’s words, “the springhead for almost every move I can make”— by tracing the evolution of the book Men of Concord from Wyeth’s initial inspiration for it in 1918 to its long-delayed but triumphant publication in 1936.

More than seventy years later, Wyeth’s illustrations for Men of Concord continue to inspire because they offer an intimate, genuine portrait of the Thoreauvian world.