Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
September Afternoon
Alternate Title(s):Man Fishing
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1916
Dimensions:
42 × 48 in. (106.7 × 121.9 cm)
Private collection
Accession number: SUPP2000.85
Research Number: NCW: 85
InscribedLower right: N. C. WYETH (underlined)
ProvenanceThe artist; Mrs. N. C. Wyeth; Carolyn Wyeth to 1973; (Frank E. Fowler, Lookout Mountain, TN); Mr. David Edgerton; (Judy Goffman, New York, NY, by June 1987, to at least Dec. 1991); Cal and Linda Sutliff, Washington, DC; (Sotheby's, New York, NY, Dec. 2, 2010; did not sell); (Nicholas Wyeth Inc., Cushing, ME); (Haynes Galleries, Thomaston, ME); (by 8/2011 through at least 1/2016, with Mitchell Brown Fine Art, Inc., Paradise Valley, AZ)
Exhibition HistoryWilmington, DE, 1916, no. 94, winner of the Copeland Prize for "best painting"; Chadds Ford, PA, 1968, no. 6 as "Man Fishing"; Chadds Ford, PA, 1972, no. 133; Greenville, SC, 1974, no. 12; Chadds Ford, PA, Brandywine River Museum, "In Pursuit of Sport," Sept. 12 - Nov. 22, 1987, mentioned in exhibition brochure; 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. 149
References
"Fine Display of Paintings at the Century Club," (Wilimington, DE) Every Evening, Nov. 7, 1916, p. 7; N. C. Wyeth, "For Better Illustration," Scribner's Magazine, vol. LXVI, no. 5 (Nov. 1919), p. 641; Richard Layton, "Inventory of Paintings in the Wyeth Studio, 1950, " unpublished, Wyeth Family Archives, p. 73; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 182, color illustration p. 173; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), L.100, p. 730, 731; Christine B. Podmaniczky, "N. C. Wyeth, American Regionalist" in Rural Modern, American Art Beyond the City (NY: Rizzoli, 2016), p. 163, illus. in color, p. 163;
Curatorial RemarksIn early September 1916, the artist wrote to his friend Sidney M. Chase about a landscape currently on his easel, "the culmination of many studies and the deepest consideration I was capable of..." (9/8/1916, Wyeth Family Archives). This may be "September Afternoon" and in subsequent letters to his mother (9/15/1916 and 9/22/1916, Wyeth Family Archives) he revealed that "things were coming a little hard." Wyeth told his mother that he would submit this picture to the "leading shows in the country" as his "debut into the legitimate painting field." (NCW to HZW, dated in another hand only "Sept. 1916," Wyeth Family Archives). During the Annual Exhibition of the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in November 1916, this picture won the Copeland Prize for "best painting."
This painting is reproduced in Wyeth's article "For Better Illustration " where it is subtitled "Studied directly from nature." Wyeth deplored the tendency of young art students to move into the field of illustration before acquiring "a thorough working knowledge of nature in her simplest forms."
This painting is reproduced in Wyeth's article "For Better Illustration " where it is subtitled "Studied directly from nature." Wyeth deplored the tendency of young art students to move into the field of illustration before acquiring "a thorough working knowledge of nature in her simplest forms."
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transparency directly from painting
Photo Credit:BRM file photography