Country Gentleman, cover illustration

In June of 1944, N. C. Wyeth’s painting of farmers in the Brandywine Valley graced the cover of Country Gentleman, which was then America’s foremost rural agricultural magazine. An editor’s note inside explained “Chadds Ford, of Pennsylvania Revolutionary fame, sets the scene for our haymakers. That’s the historic Brandywine Creek you see in the background. It was done from N. C. Wyeth’s studio window—country he’s been painting for forty years.” 

Wyeth posed his young nephew Denys McCoy on a hay-covered platform, holding reins in his hands, as a model for this painting. This is one among several covers Wyeth completed for the magazine. By the 1940s, some of the publication’s covers were photographic, while others came from leading American regionalist artists including John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton.