Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Sitter:
Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth
My Mother
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1929
Dimensions:
36 1/4 × 40 1/4 in. (92.4 × 102.2 cm)
Brandywine River Museum of Art, Bequest of Carolyn Wyeth, 1996
Accession number: 96.1.27
Label Copy:
An extraordinarily influential presence in her son’s life, Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth encouraged her son's earliest artistic endeavors. In return, he confided to her a career's worth of aspirations and frustrations in hundreds of letters written from 1902 until her death in 1925. In this posthumous portrait, N. C. Wyeth depicts his mother in the kitchen of his boyhood home in Needham, Massachusetts. The figure outside the window is Wyeth's maternal grandfather, walking the path to his house next door, seen at the right in the painting. The skewed perspective of walls and tabletop and his mother’s indistinct features suggest dream imagery created from intense emotion.
Research Number: NCW: 131
InscribedLower left: N. C. WYETH (underlined); on reverse, label remnant nailed to stretcher through tacking edge: [missing]vania Academy of the Fine / [missing] and Twenty-Eighth / Oil and Sculpture 1933
ProvenanceN. C. Wyeth; Mrs. N. C. Wyeth; Carolyn Wyeth
Exhibition HistoryWilmington, DE, 1930(1), no. 31; Baltimore, MD, 1931, no. 31; Philadelphia, PA, 1933, no. 426; Philadelphia, PA, 1935(2); West Chester, PA, 1935(2), no. 2; Wilmington, DE, 1946, no. 25; Washington, DC, 1946, no. 7; Chadds Ford, PA, 1982, no. 31, text p. 30, illus. in color p. 31; Chadds Ford, PA, 1995, no. 10, color illus. p. 33; Louisville, KY, 1998, no. 3, illus. in color, p. 4; Chadds Ford, PA, Brandywine River Museum of Art, June 22-Sept. 15, 2019 (and Portland, ME, Portland Museum of Art, Oct. 4, 2019-Jan. 12, 2020, and Cincinnati, OH, Taft Museum, Feb. 8-May 3, 2020), "N. C. Wyeth: New Perspectives," illus. p. 172
References
The (Baltimore, MD) Sun, Jan. 16, 1931, illus. in b/w; "Wyeths Hold One-Family Exhibition," Philadelphia Record, March 31, 1935, 4: p. 6; C. H. Bonte, "That Gifted Wyeth Family Exhibiting at the Alliance," Philadelphia Inquirer, March 31, 1935, p. SO 9; "Walden Pond Revisited Deserves Close Study," (West Chester, PA) Daily Local News, Oct. 16, 1935, p. 7; Richard Layton, "Inventory of Paintings in the Wyeth Studio, 1950, " unpublished, Wyeth Family Archives, p. 93; Betsy James Wyeth, ed., The Wyeths The Letters of N. C. Wyeth, 1901-1945 (Boston: Gambit, 1971), p. 742, illus. in color f. p. 736; M. Stephen Doherty, "N. C. Wyeth Centennial Exhibition," American Artist Magazine, Aug. 1982, color illus. p. 63; Richard Meryman, Andrew Wyeth: First Impressions (New York: Abrams, 1991), illus. in b/w p. 15; Stephen May, "N. C. Wyeth's Midlife Masterpieces," Down East Magazine, vol. 42, no. 4 (Nov. 1995), illus. in color p. 62; David Michaelis, N. C. Wyeth, A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), ps. 301-302, 315, illus. in color after p. 308; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), P.32, p. 813; Jason Williams, "Competing Visions: The Alternate Wests of Elinor Pruitt Stewart and N. C. Wyeth," pub. in Western American Literature, vol. 44, no. 4 (Winter 2010), ps. 378-379; Toby Thompson, "Perspective: N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945)," Western Art and Architecture, vol. 8, no. 6 (Dec. 2014/Jan. 2015), illus. in color, p. 99;
Curatorial RemarksHenriette Zirngiebel Wyeth (1857-1925) was an extraordinarily influential presence in N. C. Wyeth's life. It was she who encouraged her son's earliest artistic endeavors; he confided to her a career's worth of aspirations and frustrations in hundreds of letters written from 1902 to 1925. In this portrait painted from memory after her death, Wyeth relied on the setting and familiar objects to express his mother's importance in his life. The scene is the kitchen of Wyeth's boyhood home in Needham, Massachusetts, and the figure outside the window is Wyeth's maternal grandfather, walking the path to his house next door. Like other personal paintings from the 1920s, the portrait shows the modernist style that Wyeth experimented with between 1925 and 1935.
A picture in the Baltimore newspaper (1931, above) shows the painting framed in a heavy and ornate gold frame, inventoried on a frame list that hung on the artist's studio wall as "My Mother (Gold) 36 x 40". According to Andrew Wyeth, the present frame may have been put on the painting for the memorial exhibition at the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in 1946. Although the present frame is not signed, consider letter NCW to AW, Oct. 9, 1940 (WFA) which suggests a possible attribution to Maurice Fincken.
In 1934, Wyeth painted a still life of a chair and table, depicting the portrait of his mother in the upper right corner of the painting (see NCW 1466).
A picture in the Baltimore newspaper (1931, above) shows the painting framed in a heavy and ornate gold frame, inventoried on a frame list that hung on the artist's studio wall as "My Mother (Gold) 36 x 40". According to Andrew Wyeth, the present frame may have been put on the painting for the memorial exhibition at the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in 1946. Although the present frame is not signed, consider letter NCW to AW, Oct. 9, 1940 (WFA) which suggests a possible attribution to Maurice Fincken.
In 1934, Wyeth painted a still life of a chair and table, depicting the portrait of his mother in the upper right corner of the painting (see NCW 1466).
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transparency directly from painting
Photo Credit:Rick Echelmeyer, 1995
On view