Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Ridge Church
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1936
Dimensions:
36 × 40 1/8 in. (91.4 × 101.9 cm)
Collection of Linda L. Bean
Accession number: SUPP2000.754
Research Number: NCW: 754
InscribedLower left: N. C. WYETH
ProvenanceThe artist; Mrs. N. C. Wyeth; Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Valloti; (gallery ?)
Exhibition HistoryRockland, ME, 1982, ps. 4 and 9, illustration in color p. 5; Chadds Ford, PA, 1995, no. 27, illustration in color p. 55; Portland, ME, 2000, illustration in color, fig. 20, p. 33; Chadds Ford, PA, 2003; Chadds Ford, PA, "Rural Modern, American Art Beyond the City," Oct. 29, 2016-Jan. 22, 2017, plate 62; 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. 184
References
Probably Richard Layton, "Inventory of Paintings in the Wyeth Studio, 1950, " unpublished, Wyeth Family Archives, p. 89; Betsy James Wyeth, ed., The Wyeths, The Letters of N. C. Wyeth, 1901-1945 (Boston: Gambit, 1971) p. 760; Christopher Hyde, "N. C. Wyeth's Maine Legacy," Down East The Magazine of Maine (Nov. 1982), illus. p. 30; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), L.197, p. 766; Amanda C. Burdan, “Off the Beaten Path: Aspects of Rural Modernism” in Rural Modern, American Art Beyond the City (NY: Rizzoli, 2016), plate 62
Curatorial RemarksThis is the later of two paintings the artist did of the ca. 1880s Ridge Church in Martinsville, Maine (burned May 5, 1939). The earlier version (NCW 890), finished prior to 1930, is a somber, straight forward view in muted colors. In this later version, an expressionistic style recalls the paintings for The Odyssey of Homer (1929) and several personal paintings of the early 1930s. Swirling clouds, mysterious light, a surreal palette and the prominence of the graveyard in foreground all give an unnatural tone to the image. Wyeth injected into the building an eerie life-force which seems to make the architecture bulge and pulse. Other sources for inspiration may be the some of the Russian folk paintings collected by the artist's friend Christian Brinton, and Rockwell Kent's "Mother and Chicks" of 1923, reproduced in Carl Zigrosser's "Rockwellkentiana" of 1933 which Wyeth owned.
In a letter dated September 3, 1936, he wrote "We have also been up to the Glenmere church in the moonlight. It is stupendous in spirit, that simple little edifice!" (Betsy James Wyeth, ed., p. 760). That reference is to a painting expedition he and Andrew took--Andrew's oil on canvas view is also titled Ridge Church and is privately owned. The following year, Carolyn Wyeth painted the church, a canvas owned by the Brandywine River Museum of Art (85.10.103).
In a letter dated September 3, 1936, he wrote "We have also been up to the Glenmere church in the moonlight. It is stupendous in spirit, that simple little edifice!" (Betsy James Wyeth, ed., p. 760). That reference is to a painting expedition he and Andrew took--Andrew's oil on canvas view is also titled Ridge Church and is privately owned. The following year, Carolyn Wyeth painted the church, a canvas owned by the Brandywine River Museum of Art (85.10.103).
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transparency directly from painting
Photo Credit:Rick Echelmeyer, 7/2003