$110,000
Estimate: $120,000 - $180,000
American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists
Auction: December 7, 2014 2:00:00 PM EDT
Signed and dated 'N.C. Wyeth 1910' bottom right, oil on canvas
47 1/2 x 38 1/4 in. (120.7 x 97.2cm)
Provenance: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
The Artist.
Given as a gift from the above.
Sidney M. Chase.
Mrs. Sidney M. Chase.
Mrs. N.C. Wyeth.
By descent in the family.
Carolyn Wyeth.
Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, Delaware (as "The Poet")
Collection of John Edward Dell, c. 1992-1995.
Acquired from the above.
Private Collection, New Jersey.
LITERATURE:
Dorothy Canfield. "The Artist." Scribner's Magazine, March, 1911, pg 288.
C.B. Podmaniczky, N.C. Wyeth: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, vol. one, London, 2008, pg. 216, no. I.321, (illustrated).
NOTE:
One of America's greatest illustrators, N.C. Wyeth garnered considerable renown for his work with Scribner's, particularly his illustration of the Scribner Classics. The present painting illustrates a fantastic yarn about an unknown artist, a farmer in fact, painting in the Pennsylvania country side. A very respected picture-dealer in London tells the tale of discovering the artist among the Quakers. The picture-dealer had just wandered far through field and forest before dawn, stopping to lean on a tree as the artist brought his cows out to graze as the sun rose beyond the hills. When the picture-dealer's guests saw the farmer's painting, he drew comparisons to Vermeer and Leonardo Da Vinci. It seems only fitting that Wyeth would be asked to illustrate a story of an exceptional artist working in rural Pennsylvania.