Logging Road

Betsy Wyeth grew up in an artistic family. Her father Merle James was a talented painter, and her sister Gwendolyn developed into an accomplished watercolorist. Merle James studied art at Syracuse University and in 1915 married Elizabeth Browning. The two settled in East Aurora, New York, in a community founded by Elbert Hubbard called Roycroft that became a center of the American Arts & Crafts movement. James was an active member of the East Aurora Paint and Varnish Club. The studio at his home, called Harmony Castle, became a gathering place for the Club’s artists. He was art director at Roycroft Press and in 1924 became the rotogravure editor of the Buffalo Courier-Express. It was at the James family’s summer home in Cushing, Maine, that Andrew Wyeth first met Betsy in 1939. After retiring there in 1946, Merle James often painted scenes of Cushing, as in this impressionistic landscape. Through the contrast of evergreens against the wheat-colored field, and the tire tracks that wind their way into the distance, James draws the viewer into the scene.