Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
The Sign in the Heavens which the Judean Shepherds Watching Their Flocks See this Year
Alternate Title(s):Judean Shepherds
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1918
Dimensions:
39 1/2 × 31 in. (100.3 × 78.7 cm)
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Joel D. Sugg
Accession number: SUPP2000.517
Research Number: NCW: 517
InscribedLower right: N. C. WYETH (underlined)
ProvenanceThe artist; Mr. and Mrs. Gilman Hall (friends of N. C. Wyeth), to early 1950s; gifted through family friend to Vienna Presbyterian Church, Vienna, VA, to 1986; (Judy Goffman American Paintings, New York, NY, 1987); (?); (Illustration House, NY, NY, Nov. 10, 1990, no. 178, as "Judean Shepherds"); Collection of Robert and Carolyn Wohlsen, to 2010; [Schoonover Studios, Wilmington, DE]; Private Collection, 2010-2016; [Schoonover Studios, Wilmington, DE]; Joel D. and Suzanne Sugg, 2016 -
Exhibition HistoryLititz, PA, 1995; Rockland, ME, 2000, color illustration, fig. 35; Annville, PA, Lebanon Valley College, Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery, "N. C. Wyeth: Storyteller," Aug. 28 - Oct. 11, 2009
References
Betsy James Wyeth, ed., The Wyeths, The Letters of N. C. Wyeth, 1901-1945 (Boston: Gambit, 1971), p. 573; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 271; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), I.735, p. 377; _____, N. C. Wyeth, Poems of American Patriotism. Rockland, Maine: Farnsworth Art Museum, 2018, ps. 80-81, illus. p. 81;
Curatorial Remarks"In the past eight days I have all but completed two pictures...for the Red Cross Magazine...trying to bring out dramatically the sharp contrast of the new as against the old....my first picture depicts a group of shepherds on the hill outside the Holy City, gazing wraptly and with astonishment at an English reconnoitering airtplaine" (Wyeth, above). After delivering the set of four paintings to New York in mid-February, Wyeth acknowledged that the "Jerusalem pictures did not prove quite the pleasure expected, owing to a noticeable lack of enthusiasm on the part of the editors" (NCW to Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth, "I'm sitting in the glass house..." and dated in another hand Feb. 14, 1918, Wyeth Family Archives).
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Digital image from painting after conservation in 2014
Photo Credit:Michael Neville