Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Corn Harvest
Alternate Title(s):Autumn in the Hill Country; Corn Harvest on the Brandywine
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: ca. 1934
Dimensions:
48 × 52 in. (121.9 × 132.1 cm)
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Clarence Poe, in memory of their son William Dismukes Poe
Accession number: SUPP2000.115
Research Number: NCW: 115
InscribedLower right: N. C. WYETH (underlined) / 193 (last digit illegible)
ProvenanceThe artist; (possibly Progressive Farmer Magazine); Dr. and Mrs. Clarence Poe, Raleigh, NC, 1939 - 1961
Exhibition Historypossibly Wilmington, DE, 1934, no. 22, as "October Brandywine"; Philadelphia, PA, 1936, no. 233, as "Corn Harvest"; Kinston, NC, Kinston Arts Council, "Thanksgiving Week," Nov. 17 - Dec. 1, 1966; Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "American Paintings Since 1900 from the Permanent Collection," Apr.1 - 23, 1967, no. 81, illus. in b/w, as "Corn Harvest on the Brandywine"; Chadds Ford, PA, 1972, no. 48; Greenville, SC, 1974, no. 37; Asheville, NC, Asheville Art Museum, "American Paintings from the Permanent Collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art", May 16 - June 27, 1976, p. 31, illus. b/w; Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Howard Pyle and the Wyeths: Four Generations of American Imagination," Feb. 4- April 1, 1984 (exhibited at Raleigh venue only of exhibition organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; not listed in catalogue, but illus. b/w in gallery brochure published by NCMA); Chadds Ford, PA, 1992; Wilmington, NC, St. John's Museum of Art, "Inventing the American Landscape: A Dialogue with the Visual World," April 25 - June 28, 1998, and three subsequent venues through April 1999; Chadds Ford, PA, Brandywine River Museum of Art, June 22-Sept. 15, 2019 (and Cincinnati, OH, Taft Museum, Feb. 8-May 3, 2020), "N. C. Wyeth: New Perspectives," illus. p. 181
References
Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), illus. in color p. 180; Charles W. Stanford, Jr., Selections from British and American Painting and Sculpture (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1967), no. 37, illus. in color; Progressive Farmer, (Feb. 1986), detail illus. in color on cover, discussed p. 7; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), L.179, p. 758, 759
Curatorial RemarksThe dating of this painting is based on the assumption that it would have been painted in the fall and on a letter Wyeth wrote from Port Clyde in August, 1935: "There's another man, a Mr. Paul of Phila. who wants a pastoral or farm scene, and I may have to bother you to show him the October Brandywine valley canvas" (NCW to Henriette Wyeth Hurd, dated by NCW "Friday Aug. 2," 1935 by context, Wyeth Family Archives). That would make it likely then that this work is "October Brandywine" shown at the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in November 1934, although reviews of the exhibition do not mention the painting. In 1927, Wyeth had painted the same scene in a modernist style (NCW 1018).
Clarence Poe was the editor of Progressive Farmer Magazine. He generally purchased "first reproduction rights" from Wyeth, not the actual artwork. This painting was most likely done as a landscape rather than as a commissioned work; proportionally it is not sized for the vertical format of a Progressive Farmer cover and only a detail was used on the 1936 cover. The artist altered the painting after its first reproduction, changing the horizon, adding cows by the river, and reworking the corn sheaves in the foreground.
Clarence Poe was the editor of Progressive Farmer Magazine. He generally purchased "first reproduction rights" from Wyeth, not the actual artwork. This painting was most likely done as a landscape rather than as a commissioned work; proportionally it is not sized for the vertical format of a Progressive Farmer cover and only a detail was used on the 1936 cover. The artist altered the painting after its first reproduction, changing the horizon, adding cows by the river, and reworking the corn sheaves in the foreground.
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:1. Transparency directly from painting. 2. digital scan from printed image, cover, Progressive Farmer Magazine, Nov. 1936, Brandywine River Museum Library
Photo Credit:1. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh 2. BRM staff