Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Buttonwood Farm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1919
Dimensions:
48 1/2 × 42 3/4 in. (123.2 × 108.6 cm)
Courtesy of the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania
Gift of George D. Horst, 1920
Accession number: SUPP2000.63
Research Number: NCW: 63
InscribedLower right: N. C. WYETH (underlined)
Exhibition HistoryPhiladelphia, PA, 1920(1), no. 39, illustration in b/w, p. 21; Wilmington, DE, 1920, no. 82; Harrisburg, PA, 1965, no. 114; Chadds Ford, PA, 1972, no. 131; Greenville, SC, 1974, no. 5 on p. 8, illustration in b/w, p. 17; Washington, D. C., National Collection of Fine Arts, April 12, 1976 - Jan. 18, 1978; Chadds Ford, PA, 1982, no. 7 on p. 41, illustration in b/w on p. 14; New York, NY, 1985, no. 1 on checklist; Marietta, GA, 1998, no numbers, illustration in color, unpaginated; Portland, ME, 2000, illustration in color, fig. 11, p. 21; Annville, PA, Lebanon Valley College, Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery, "N. C. Wyeth: Storyteller," Aug. 28 - Oct. 11, 2009; Chadds Ford, PA, Brandywine River Museum of Art, June 22-Sept. 15, 2019, "N. C. Wyeth: New Perspectives," illus. p. 159
References
Unidentified Philadelphia newspaper, Feb. 12, 1920 (clipping in Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts scrapbook, Archives of American Art reel P 56); Yarnall Abbott, "Comment on Art and Artists," (Philadelphia) Sunday Press, Feb. 15, 1920, p. 8; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1972), p. 182, illustration in b/w, p. 179; J. Daniel Selig, "A Visit to the Reading Museum, The American Collection, Part II" American Art Review, vol. 1, no. 3 (March-April 1974), illustration in color, p. 71; Kate F. Jennings. N. C. Wyeth (New York, NY: Brompton Books Corp., Crescent Books, 1992), illustration in color, p. 96; David Michaelis, N. C. Wyeth, A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 277; James Robinson, "Vermeer Part III Color continued, and Edges" Classical Realism Journal - The American Society of Classical Realism, vol. IV, no. 2 (Spring 1998), p. 62; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), L.130, p. 741, 742; Christine B. Podmaniczky, et al., N. C. Wyeth's Men of Concord (Concord, MA: Concord Museum, 2016), p. 6;
Curatorial RemarksThe painting is dated by its exhibition record and is assumed to have been started the preceding spring. The work was left unfinished, however, and completed just before the exhibition: "I pulled one of my large landscapes out of a semi-finished condition and got that off to the Philadelphia Academy...Lafayette's Headquarters with the huge Sycamore trees about it in the spring. I call it 'Buttonwood Farm' "(NCW to HZW, Jan. 21. 1920, WFA). Historians now refer to the house as the "Gilpin House,"--and there is doubt that Lafayette ever visited.
According to clippings in a Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts scrapbook (Archives of American Art reel P 56), comments on the first exhibition of this painting ranged from " N. C. Wyeth eloquently reading the lesson of the late autumn silhouette in his 'Among the Buttonwooods'" (unidentified Philadelphia newspaper dated Feb. 12, 1920) to "a clean and sunny landscape by N. C. Wyeth" (Yarnall Abbott, "Comment on Art and Artists," (Philadelphia) Sunday Press, Feb. 15, 1920, p. 8). Wyeth himself wrote to his friend Sidney Chase, "(the painting was) well hung and pleasantly received--but looks too conservative, lacks fire and passion of execution and color--however, it is healthy I think and the right kind of canvas to represent me at this stage of the game" (NCW to Chase, dated in another hand 2/6/1920, WFA).
According to clippings in a Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts scrapbook (Archives of American Art reel P 56), comments on the first exhibition of this painting ranged from " N. C. Wyeth eloquently reading the lesson of the late autumn silhouette in his 'Among the Buttonwooods'" (unidentified Philadelphia newspaper dated Feb. 12, 1920) to "a clean and sunny landscape by N. C. Wyeth" (Yarnall Abbott, "Comment on Art and Artists," (Philadelphia) Sunday Press, Feb. 15, 1920, p. 8). Wyeth himself wrote to his friend Sidney Chase, "(the painting was) well hung and pleasantly received--but looks too conservative, lacks fire and passion of execution and color--however, it is healthy I think and the right kind of canvas to represent me at this stage of the game" (NCW to Chase, dated in another hand 2/6/1920, WFA).
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transparency directly from painting.
Photo Credit:Courtesy of the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania