Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
untitled (illustration for Back to the Farm)
Alternate Title(s):The Scythers (Back to the Farm); The Scythers ("Down in the hayfield where scythes glint through the clover."); The Scything (Back to the Farm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1907
Dimensions:
37 1/2 × 26 3/4 in. (95.3 × 67.9 cm)
Collection of the University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel L. Kingan
Accession number: SUPP2000.112
Research Number: NCW: 112
InscribedLower right: N. C. WYETH (underlined) / CHADDS FORD - PA. / 07
ProvenanceThe artist; (?); Mr. and Mrs. Samuel L. Kingan, to 1952
Exhibition HistoryHarrisburg, PA, 1965, no. 56, as "The Scything (Back to the Farm)"; Rockland, ME, 1966, no. 4, as "The Scythers (Back to the Farm)"; Chadds Ford, PA, 1972, no. 44; Greenville, SC, 1974, no. 14; "The Working American," exhibition organized by A. B. Gerdts and the Smithsonian Travelling Exhibition Service for Dist. 1199, National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, NY, shown at 10 locations, Oct. 1979 - Jan. 1981, catalogue no. 42, illustrated; Portland, ME, 2000, no numbers, p. 55, as "The Scythers ("Down in the hayfield where scythes glint through the clover."); Oklahoma City, OK, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, "Americans in Paris, 1850-1910, Aug. 28 -Nov. 30, 2003; Stockbridge, MA, Norman Rockwell Museum of American Illustration, "Keepers of the Flame," June 9 - Oct. 28, 2018, p. 93 illus. p. 95; Chadds Ford, PA, Brandywine River Museum of Art, June 22-Sept. 15, 2019, "N. C. Wyeth: New Perspectives," illus. p. 116
References
Betsy James Wyeth, ed., The Wyeths The Letters of N. C. Wyeth, 1901-1945 (Boston: Gambit, 1971), p. 219; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 299, illustration in color, p. 66; Peter Bermingham, General Ed., Paintings and Sculpture in the Permanent Collection, with Selected Drawings and Watercolors (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Museum of Art, 1983), illus. p. 114; William H. Gerdts, Art Across America Two Centuries of Regional Painting 1710-1920 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), illustration in color, p. 282 (Vol. 1); Kate F. Jennings, N. C. Wyeth (New York: Brompton Books Corp., Crescent Books, 1992), illustration in color, p. 10; David Michaelis, N. C. Wyeth A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), ps. 157-158, illustration in color after p. 20; John Edward Dell, ed., Visions of Adventure, N. C. Wyeth and the Brandywine Artists, (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2000), illustration in color p. 107; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), I.204, p. 170
Curatorial RemarksWyeth rejected his first attempt at this subject (see NCW 9), despite Howard Pyle's approval. The artist felt that the presence of the girl in the foreground trivialized the picture, and so in his second attempt he moved her to the middle ground to emphasize the man working with the scythe. The second version did not come easily, as he wrote to his mother on August 9, 1907. "I have worked and worked on that hayfield picture until I don't know what I have got, so now I have dropped it for a few days to do a picture for Century. When I return to it I shall make rather a radical change (to entirely repaint and rearrange the pricipal figure.)" The quality of the proofs, shown to the artist in June 1908, elicited this response, "I have never been bit so hard with poor reproductions before and feel that last summer's work is for naught at all."
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transparency directly from painting
Photo Credit:D. Griggs, 10/2000