Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Island Funeral
Medium: Egg tempera and oil on hardboard
Date: 1939
Dimensions:
44 1/2 × 52 3/8 in. (113 × 133 cm)
Brandywine River Museum of Art, Gift of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company in honor of the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art's 50th Anniversary, 2017
Accession number: 2017.1.3
Label Copy:
Island Funeral was inspired by the funeral of Rufus Washington Teel, a Maine fisherman, who died on September 11, 1934. Teel was born, lived and died on Teel Island, about a mile off shore from the village of Port Clyde where the Wyeths had a summer home. No members of the Wyeth family attended the funeral, but Ann Wyeth McCoy remembered that the family sat on the porch of Eight Bells, their home, and watched the boats pass on the way to and from the funeral. The artist must have considered the idea for the picture for some time; Andrew Wyeth believes his father started the painting in 1935, and he worked on it intermittently until 1939 in his Chadds Ford studio. Wyeth successfully combined aspects of a modernist style with a composition that recalls the late 19th and early 20th century bird’s-eye views.
One of the most striking features of the painting is the intensity of the blues and greens Wyeth used, the result of an informal collaboration with the DuPont Company. Chemists employed at the company's Jackson Laboratory provided Wyeth with pigments made from "Monastral Fast Blue B" and "Monastral Fast Green G," two vibrant, light-fast dyes that had been recently developed at DuPont.
Island Funeral was the centerpiece of Wyeth’s first and only one-artist gallery exhibition at New York’s Macbeth Gallery. The exhibition’s purpose was to present Wyeth as an artist rather than an illustrator. All his life, he struggled to shed the pejorative connotations associated with illustration, and more than any other painting, the multi-layered Island Funeral demonstrates his consummate artistry of composition, color, and expression. Island Funeral shows that Wyeth overcame that designation of "illustrator" and earned his place in the history of American art.
Island Funeral was inspired by the funeral of Rufus Washington Teel, a Maine fisherman, who died on September 11, 1934. Teel was born, lived and died on Teel Island, about a mile off shore from the village of Port Clyde where the Wyeths had a summer home. No members of the Wyeth family attended the funeral, but Ann Wyeth McCoy remembered that the family sat on the porch of Eight Bells, their home, and watched the boats pass on the way to and from the funeral. The artist must have considered the idea for the picture for some time; Andrew Wyeth believes his father started the painting in 1935, and he worked on it intermittently until 1939 in his Chadds Ford studio. Wyeth successfully combined aspects of a modernist style with a composition that recalls the late 19th and early 20th century bird’s-eye views.
One of the most striking features of the painting is the intensity of the blues and greens Wyeth used, the result of an informal collaboration with the DuPont Company. Chemists employed at the company's Jackson Laboratory provided Wyeth with pigments made from "Monastral Fast Blue B" and "Monastral Fast Green G," two vibrant, light-fast dyes that had been recently developed at DuPont.
Island Funeral was the centerpiece of Wyeth’s first and only one-artist gallery exhibition at New York’s Macbeth Gallery. The exhibition’s purpose was to present Wyeth as an artist rather than an illustrator. All his life, he struggled to shed the pejorative connotations associated with illustration, and more than any other painting, the multi-layered Island Funeral demonstrates his consummate artistry of composition, color, and expression. Island Funeral shows that Wyeth overcame that designation of "illustrator" and earned his place in the history of American art.
Research Number: NCW: 411
InscribedUpper left: N. C. WYETH (underlined); lower left: N. C. WYETH; reverse of panel painted with a coat of white paint and a coat of buff paint with a varnish layer over all; painted on reverse of panel in NCW's hand: "ISLAND FUNERAL" / by N. C. WYETH (underlined) / 1939 / EGG TEMPERA AND OIL / ON GESSO GROUND / CHADDS FORD. PA. (underlined); label adhered to panel: Reg. no. 1907 Case no. 817 / "Directions in American Painting" / October 23-December 14, 1941/ Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa. / (completed in NCW's hand) ISLAND FUNERAL / painter N. C. WYETH / owner N. C. WYETH / CHADDS FORD, Pa. (same label attached to frame)
ProvenanceThe artist; Mrs N. C. Wyeth to ca. 1947; By 1948, Collection of the Hotel DuPont, Wilmington, Delaware
Exhibition HistoryNew York, NY, 1939, no. 8; Wilmington, DE, 1940(2), no. 25, for sale for $1,800.00 according to exhibition price list; Philadelphia, PA, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, "Oil Painting and Sculpture by Artists of Philadelphia and its Environs," April 13 - May 12, 1940, no. 75; Pittsburgh, PA, 1941, no. 297, illus. b/w plate 31; Wilmington, DE, 1946, no. 2; Washington, DC, 1946, no. 3; New York, NY, 1946, no. 6; Harrisburg, PA, 1965, no. 110; Wilmington, DE, Delaware Art Museum, "Four Decades: The Hotel DuPont Collection," Jan. 16 - Feb. 28, 1982, p. 56, illus. in color; Chadds Ford, PA, 1982, ps. 32-33, illus. b/w p. 33, no. 20 p. 46; Rockland, ME, 1998, no. 88 p. 166, illus. in color ps. 88-89; Washington, D. C., National Museum of American Art, "Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory," April 2 - Aug. 22, 1999, cat. no. 168, illus. on catalogue cover and on p. 152; Chadds Ford, PA, 2003; 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. 190-191
References
N. C. Wyeth, Income Tax Notes for 1939 (unpublished, Brandywine River Museum Library); Edward Alden Jewell, "In the Realm of Art: A Rush of Pre-holiday Events," New York Times, Dec. 10, 1939, sect. X, p. 11, illus. in b/w; Royal Cortissoz, "N. C. Wyeth," New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 10, 1939, sect. 6, page 8; "The Clan Wyeth Presents Its Famed Patriarch," Art Digest, vol. XIV, no. 6 (Dec. 15, 1939), p. 8; "Pa Wyeth and His Clan," Newsweek, Dec. 18, 1939, p. 40; "Art Exhibition Popular Vote is Completed," The Morning News (Wilmington, DE), Nov. 30, 1940, p. 4; Ernest W. Watson, "N. C. Wyeth, Giant on a Hilltop," American Artist, vol. 9, no. 1 (Jan. 1945), p. 19; author unknown, "Paintings in the Hotel DuPont," Hotel DuPont: Wilmington, DE, 1948, illustrated on cover, unnumbered pages within; Marge Cook, "Artist N. C. Wyeth," Down East Magazine, (April 1964), color illus. p. 33; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 189, illus. b/w p. 182; Wanda M. Corn, The Art of Andrew Wyeth (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1973), illus. b/w p. 108; P. J. Wingate, The Colorful DuPont Company (Wilmington, DE: Serendipity Press, 1982), frontispiece illus. and ps. 118-119; Christopher Hyde, "N. C. Wyeth's Maine Legacy," Down East the Magazine of Maine (Nov. 1982), illus. ps. 32-33; Andrew Wyeth, "N. C. Wyeth," published in An American Vision Three Generations of Wyeth Art (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1987), p. 85 and illus. b/w p. 28; Arnold Skolnick, ed., Paintings of Maine (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1991), illus. p. 74; Charles B. McLane, Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast, vol. III, Muscongus Bay and Monhegan Island (Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 1992), color cover; David Michaelis, N. C. Wyeth A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), illus. in color after p. 372; Phillip J. Wingate, "True brilliance never fades away," Cambridge, (MD) Banner, Jan. 8, 1999, p. 4; Holland Cotter, "New England as Soothing Myth For a Nation That Wanted One," New York Times, August 10, 1999, ps. E1, 2; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), P.55, p. 824, 825; Joyce H. Stoner, "Wyeth Vertigo: On Land and Sea, in the Air, and at the Dinner Table," in Wyeth Vertigo, Shelburne, Vermont: Shelburne Museum, 2013, illus. p. 23; Christine B. Podmaniczky, "N. C. Wyeth, American Regionalist" in Rural Modern, American Art Beyond the City (NY: Rizzoli, 2016), p. 168, plate 69; "The DuPont Donation," American Fine Art Magazine, #33 (May/June 2017), illus. in color, p. 39; Christine B. Podmaniczky, "True Brilliance Never Fades: N. C. Wyeth's Island Funeral," in Jessica May and Christine B. Podmaniczky, "N. C. Wyeth: New Perspectives" (Brandywine River Museum of Art and Portland Museum of Art, 2019), p. 80, fig. 1 detail and p. 85, fig. 7 detail; Peter Ker, "The Complicated Legacy of N. C. Wyeth," PMA Magazine (Portland, ME: Portland Museum of Art), Fall 2019, illus. p. 19;
Curatorial RemarksIsland Funeral was inspired by the funeral of Rufus Washington Teel who died on September 11, 1934. Teel was born, lived and died on Teel's Island, just off shore from Port Clyde. No members of the Wyeth family attended the funeral, but Ann Wyeth McCoy remembered watching the boats pass the dock at Eight Bells on the way to and from the funeral. The artist must have considered the idea for the picture for some time; Andrew Wyeth believes his father started the painting in 1935 (AW to CBP, Brandywine River Museum files). In a March 1936 letter to A.R. McIntyre of Little, Brown and Company, Wyeth proposed "Island Funeral, The Burial of a Maine Patriarch" as an illustration for "Trending Into Maine" (NCW to A. R. McIntyre, March 23, 1936, Kenneth Roberts Papers, Dartmouth College Library), but the title did not appear on an updated list of Trending Into Maine illustrations made in October, 1937. (NCW to Kenneth Roberts, October 4, 1937, Kenneth Roberts Papers, Dartmouth College Library). At this time, Wyeth was probably experimenting with the colors in the painting, according to du Pont chemists employed at the company's Jackson Laboratory who gave him pigments made from "Monastral Fast Blue B" and "Monastral Fast Green G", two vibrant, light fast dyes recently developed at du Pont. The date on the reverse of the panel--1939--must conceal the length of time Wyeth worked, albeit intermittantly, on this masterpiece. His daughter Henriette used it in the background of "Portrait of My Father" (collection Roswell Museum and Art Gallery, Roswell, NM), and Ann Wyeth McCoy wrote music (dated Sept. 1936) inspired by the funeral and painting.
The Brandywine River Museum of Art holds a preliminary sketch for the composition (NCW 2075, 96.1.552); a photo of Wyeth standing in front of a framed "Island Funeral" taken by Edward J. S. Seal; several record photos stamped SANBORN STUDIO / WILMINGTON, DELAWARE; a photo of Wyeth posing in front of Island Funeral for Henriette Wyeth's "Portrait of My Father" (photo file P-114); and a photo of the painting hanging in the gallery during the Pittsburgh, PA, 1941 exhibition. The Wyeth Family holds a composition drawing (NCW 1101). Record and archival photographs show that the framing has remained unchanged.
E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company copyrighted a print of Island Funeral in 1967. One size was printed with an image that measures 25 5/8 x 29 7/8". The print was available in a 3-dimensional cardboard frame, that measures 30 x 34 1/4" by 2 3/8" wide. The BRMA holds an example of the "framed" print (N. C. Wyeth Collections, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Library).
The Brandywine River Museum of Art holds a preliminary sketch for the composition (NCW 2075, 96.1.552); a photo of Wyeth standing in front of a framed "Island Funeral" taken by Edward J. S. Seal; several record photos stamped SANBORN STUDIO / WILMINGTON, DELAWARE; a photo of Wyeth posing in front of Island Funeral for Henriette Wyeth's "Portrait of My Father" (photo file P-114); and a photo of the painting hanging in the gallery during the Pittsburgh, PA, 1941 exhibition. The Wyeth Family holds a composition drawing (NCW 1101). Record and archival photographs show that the framing has remained unchanged.
E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company copyrighted a print of Island Funeral in 1967. One size was printed with an image that measures 25 5/8 x 29 7/8". The print was available in a 3-dimensional cardboard frame, that measures 30 x 34 1/4" by 2 3/8" wide. The BRMA holds an example of the "framed" print (N. C. Wyeth Collections, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Library).
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:1. transparency directly from painting; 2. N. C. Wyeth standing in front of Island Funeral; 3. N. C. Wyeth posing in front of Island Funeral for Henriette Wyeth Hurd's portrait of her father
Photo Credit:1. Peter Ralston, www.pralston.com; 2. photo by Edward J. S. Seal, Brandywine River Museum library collection; 3. photo by William E. Phelps, Brandywine River Museum photography files, P114
On view