Page 14 - The Hunt Winter 2021

MEMORANDUM
A Winter Stroll
With his new Wyeth
guide, Barksdale Maynard celebrates the settings that inspired the iconic paintings.
Wihen summer has long since given way to fall’s ombres and winter shadows, it’s a perfect time for a walk—and not necessarily at Longwood Gardens to view the glorious light show. In his new book, Artists of Wyeth Country: Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and Andrew Wyeth (Temple University Press, 192 pages), W. Barksdale Maynard has mapped out
six trails around the region that pinpoint the settings that inspired the work of the three artists. “Andrew’s approach really was to go out in nature and forget you exist—disappear,” says Maynard. “That’s why no one could ever go with him. He’s got to be invisible.
Wyeth loved the colder months. “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the land—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter,” he’s been quoted as saying. “Something waits beneath it. The whole story doesn’t show.”
An Alabama native, Maynard has lectured on art and architecture at Princeton and Johns Hopkins universities, and just a touch of a Southern lilt softens his voice. “[Wyeth explored] these hills and discovered
in them what to us is a bleak, somber appearance,” he says. “That’s the root of his art—that somberness, brooding, almost troubling quality you get on a dark winter day.”
Caitlin LaPorte notes that this passion for the outdoors was a family affair. “If you look back through the history of art, nature’s always been a very prominent theme ... And the Wyeths have a lot of landscapes,” says the director of the Chester County Art Association, which was founded by Andrew’s father, N.C. Wyeth.
Pyle and N.C. Wyeth were known best for illustrations that found their way into books.
12 THE HUNT MAGAZINE winter 2021-22
By Kim Douglas | Photo by Jim Graham