Page 11 - Chester County's Branywine Valley - 2023 Tourism Guide
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TOM CRANE
Brandywine Museum of Art
One cornerstone of the Brandywine Valley’s artistic legacy is the Brandywine Museum of Art, housed in a restored 19th-century grist mill. The museum is a treasure collection of American illustration, still life and landscapes. It also showcases the work of three generations of the Wyeth family: N.C., Andrew and Jamie. The homes and studios of the Wyeths are available to tour seasonally.
The exhibition “Andrew Wyeth: Home Places” will be on view from February 4 through July
13, 2023. The artworks in this exhibition are drawn from the vast collection of The Wyeth Foundation for American Art, now managed by the Brandywine the historic houses in the vicinity of Andrew’s hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, which were repeatedly depicted in his works exhibition at the Brandywine Museum curated by William L. Coleman, Ph.D., the Museum’s inaugural Wyeth Foundation
Curator and Director of the Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Study Center.
“‘Home Places’ makes use of the astonishing holdings of the Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection to get beyond the received wisdom about this iconic artistic life,” said Coleman.
Two in-depth tours offered at the Brandywine Museum explore the Wyeth family’s home-work history. The N.C. Wyeth House & Studio Tour offers a glimpse at the life
and work of the family patriarch, Newell Convers Wyeth. In 1911, with proceeds from his illustrations for Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” N.C. Wyeth purchased 18 acres in Chadds Ford and built his home and studio overlooking the valley. It is here that he raised a family of extraordinary creativity and began the legacy of the Wyeths here in the Brandywine Valley. As you tour the family homestead and separate artist’s studio located behind the remain much the same as when the family and artist lived and worked there. The property is a designated National Historic Landmark.
The second insightful tour is of the Andrew Wyeth Studio. The original structure, a schoolhouse, was built in 1875, and was Wyeth’s home for over two decades. He and his wife Betsy raised their two boys here,
Top: N.C. Wyeth’s studio displays an illustration from “Treasure Island.” Above: N.C. Wyeth is seen painting “Cowboy.”
Tourism Guide to Chester County’s Brandywine Valley 2023 | BrandywineValley.com 9
