Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Self-portrait in Top Hat and Cape
Alternate Title(s):Portrait; Self-portrait in a Top Hat; Self-portrait with Top Hat and Cape
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: ca. 1927
Dimensions:
40 1/4 × 36 1/2 in. (102.2 × 92.7 cm)
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Frank E. Fowler
Accession number: SUPP2000.134
Research Number: NCW: 134
InscribedLower left: N. C. WYETH (underlined); label adhered to stretcher on reverse: No. 1931 / PICTURE
ProvenanceThe artist; Mrs. N. C. Wyeth; Carolyn Wyeth
Exhibition HistoryWilmington, DE, 1927, no. 14, as "Portrait"; Wilmington, DE, Du Pont Building (O'Toole Offices), (exhibition of Wyeth family work), probably spring, 1934; Harrisburg, PA, 1965, no. 5, as "Self-portrait in a Top Hat"; Wilmington, DE, 1966, no. 4; Chadds Ford, PA, 1972, no. 88, as "Self-portrait with Top Hat and Cape"; Chadds Ford, PA, 1973(1); Washington, DC: International Exhibitions Foundation, "American Self-Portraits, 1670-1973," (venues--National Portrait Gallery, Feb. 1 - March 15, 1974; Indianapolis Museum of Art, April 1 - May 15, 1974), cat. no. 65, illus. in b/w p. 145; Memphis, TN, 1983, p. 58, no. 33 on p. 96, illus. in color p. 79; Chadds Ford, PA, 1995, no. 3, illus. b/w p. 8, as "Self-portrait in Top Hat and Cape"; 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. 171
References
"Society Folk Throng to Private Showing of Delaware Artists," Wilmington (DE) Morning News, Nov. 2, 1927, p. 6; (Wilmington, DE) Every Evening, Nov. 2, 1927, p. 5; frontispiece, Scribner's Magazine, vol. LXXXIV, no. 2 (Aug. 1928); Roger Cooper, "Famous Artist Praises Stevenson," The Spotlight (March 13, 1931), illus. b/w p.1; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 278; John Delaney, ed., "N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945)," in The House of Scribner, 1905-1930, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Documentary Series, vol. 16 (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1997), illus. p. 105; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), P.29, p. 810-812
Curatorial RemarksIn an undated letter to friend Edward K. Robinson, Wyeth wrote, "I am working much more intensively than ever and really believe that I am pulling into an idiom of expression that will amount to something...I am enclosing three photos of three canvases done in the past year which slightly indicate my direction....You will recognize your old friend in the garb of his grandfather" (NCW to Ed. K. Robinson, undated, privately held.) The letter contained a photograph of the self-portrait.;Andrew Wyeth remembers that his father referred to canvases in this style as "prism paintings." N. C. Wyeth studied the work of a number of modern artists who composed pictures of fractured planes, principally by contemporary Russian artists collected by his friend the art critic Christian Brinton. Wyeth never fully integrated his subjects into the planes of color, however, preferring to use the style in backgrounds.
The modernist treatment to the background in this self-portrait presents a striking visual contrast to the 19th-century garb the artist wears. After the painting's exhibition a reviewer wrote: "To many of those present the hat was reminiscent of William M. Chase in his later days in New York where the legend is current that he imported a new "dicer" by each French steamer." The tension between the 19th-century costume and the modernist background give an enigmatic quality to the painting. The sense of mystery is furthered by the anonymity of the early exhibition title, "Portrait," and by Ann Wyeth McCoy's assertion that her father never smoked cigarettes.
Another reviewer noted in the newspaper Every Evening, "Despite the argument by several artists that the color Mr. Wyeth uses in his self portrait is stereotyped, the painter has portrayed the quintessence of humor. The picture is witty, and is one of the outstanding pictures in the exhibit..."
During the artist's lifetime, the portrait hung on the northwest wall of the studio between portraits of his mother and his father.
The modernist treatment to the background in this self-portrait presents a striking visual contrast to the 19th-century garb the artist wears. After the painting's exhibition a reviewer wrote: "To many of those present the hat was reminiscent of William M. Chase in his later days in New York where the legend is current that he imported a new "dicer" by each French steamer." The tension between the 19th-century costume and the modernist background give an enigmatic quality to the painting. The sense of mystery is furthered by the anonymity of the early exhibition title, "Portrait," and by Ann Wyeth McCoy's assertion that her father never smoked cigarettes.
Another reviewer noted in the newspaper Every Evening, "Despite the argument by several artists that the color Mr. Wyeth uses in his self portrait is stereotyped, the painter has portrayed the quintessence of humor. The picture is witty, and is one of the outstanding pictures in the exhibit..."
During the artist's lifetime, the portrait hung on the northwest wall of the studio between portraits of his mother and his father.
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transparency directly from painting
Photo Credit:Rick Echelmeyer, 1995