Displaying items by tag: Brandywine River Museum

"Horace Pippin: The Way I See It," a major exhibition of over 65 paintings of his work assembled from museums and private collections across the United States, opened in Chadds Ford, PA. One of the leading figures of 20th-century art, Horace Pippin (1888-1946) is known for his bold, colorful and expressive paintings of family life, history, religion and war. The Brandywine River Museum of Art is the only venue for this landmark exhibition.

Taking its title from Horace Pippin's response to his own question about what made him a great painter: "I paint it exactly the way it is and exactly the way I see it," the exhibition will look closely at Pippin as an artist who remained independent—creating and upholding a unique aesthetic sensibility, vividly depicting a range of subject matter, from intimate family moments and bold floral still lifes, to powerful scenes of war, history and religion that comment on issues such as racism and social justice.

The painting, "Public Health and Morale" (circa 1943) depicts an idealized American family against a backdrop of busy wartime factories, with a squadron of military airplanes over head. It is one of two commissioned by E.R. Squibb and Sons (now Bristol-Myers Squibb). The other painting, "The American Mother" (1941), was given to the Brandywine River Museum of Art by the company in 1977. The paintings were commissioned for use as advertising window displays, and were also used in internal publications.

“We are pleased that 'Public Health and Morale' will become part of the museum’s permanent N.C. Wyeth collection so that those who are inspired by the work of N.C. Wyeth, his son Andrew, and grandson Jamie, can enjoy this work for years to come,” said John Elicker, senior vice president, Public Affairs and Investor Relations, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

An arch formed by trees that becomes more like a gothic stained glass window than a scene from nature. Bird escaping an ominous forest overlaid with ... is that sound? Hidden images meant to signal "dangerous brooding," "the fear of loneliness" or "imbecility." That's just a few things visitors will discover in the Brandywine River Museum of Art's latest exhibit, "Exalted Nature: The Real and Fantastic World of Charles E. Burchfield," on view through Nov. 16. It looks specifically at Burchfield's landscapes.

The works are nearly hallucinogenic: The more you look, the more that blade of grass or that stand of trees or that fallen leaf morphs something else. And while Burchfield meant to depict how this one scene looked, smelled and sounded at this one moment, viewing the show becomes a much more internal exercise than a communal one.

At first blush, Edward Gorey's popularity might seem something of a puzzle. The prolific author and artist reveled in hermetic scenes of stiff, upper-crust figures in quasi-Edwardian garb and sometimes eyebrow-raising story lines about childhood calamities and grisly murders.

But what might have been limitations to his works turned out to be their very strengths, because of the originality of his vision, his comfortable embrace of absurdity and—perhaps most important—his wonderful, quirky sense of humor.

Who else could create an A-to-Z book about varied disasters befalling children and make it seem charming? Yet he does just that in "The Gashlycrumb Tinies; or, After the Outing" (1963), through his clever, darkly witty turns of phrase and the appealing ridiculousness of the whole thing.

A pair of exhibitions now at the Loyola University Museum of Art—the first ever of this scope in Chicago—offers an exhaustive, fascinating look at this endearing master of the gently spooky or what he called the "mildly unsettling."

On June 15, 2013 the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA will present the exhibition Jamie Wyeth, Rockwell Kent and Monhegan. Located off of the coast of Maine, Monhegan has been a popular destination for artists looking to capture its rugged wilderness, sweeping ocean views, and enduring inhabitants.

The Brandywine River Museum’s exhibition will focus on the works of Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), a contemporary realist painter who favors figurative compositions over landscapes, and Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), a realist painter, printmaker, and illustrator who often drew inspiration from the natural world and man’s relationship with its almighty forces. While Wyeth and Kent never met, their works are inextricably linked thanks to Monhegan’s evocative nature. Together, their works tell the story of the island and its people, which spans a century.

Highlights from the exhibition include Wyeth’s most recent paintings of Monhegan as well as a number of Kent’s coastal landscapes from Wyeth’s personal collection. Jamie Wyeth, Rockwell Kent and Monhegan, which was organized by Maine’s Farnsworth Museum, will be on view through November 17, 2013.

On April 26, 2013 an exhibition featuring 30 paintings by N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945) will open at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME; the works are being loaned by the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA

Every Picture Tells a Story: N.C. Wyeth Illustrations from the Brandywine River Museum spans four decades and includes Wyeth’s early western paintings, paintings that were used as illustrations for Robert Louis Stevenson books, and later works that boast a more experimental style. Wyeth, an American artist and prolific illustrator, divided his time between Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley and coastal Maine. The Farnsworth often highlights Wyeth’s Maine-related works.

Every Picture Tells a Story will be on view through December 29, 2013.

Andrew Wyeth’s ‘Ides of March:’ The Making of a Masterpiece is currently on view at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA. The exhibition is part of a five-year sequence of events that will culminate in 2017 with a centennial celebration of the realist painter Andew Wyeth (1917-2009), including a major retrospective of the artist’s work. A native of Chadds Ford, Wyeth was a prominent force in the art world during the mid-20^th century.

The privately owned Ides of March (1974), which is rarely exhibited, will be presented alongside more than 30 of Wyeth’s preliminary studies for the tempera painting. The exhibition offers viewers a rare glimpse into Wyeth’s painstaking approach to composition and his renowned use of evocative imagery.

Organizers hope that The Making of a Masterpiece and the museum’s future events will introduce Wyeth as well as his family members to a new crop of art enthusiasts. Wyeth’s father, N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), was a celebrated American artist and illustrator and his son, Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), is a well-known realist painter and heir to the Brandywine School of painters, which was created by his grandfather and father.

The Making of a Masterpiece will be on view at the Brandywine River Museum through May 19, 2013. Visitors of the museum can also take a tour of Wyeth’s studio now through November 19, 2013.

 

“I am working so please do not disturb,” reads the block-lettered placard. “I do not sign autographs.”

This warning hangs on the door of an unassuming white clapboard house in Chadds Ford, Pa. It’s the house where Andrew Wyeth worked for nearly seven decades, producing many of the paintings that made him known as “America’s artist.” This summer, for the first time since his death in 2009 at 91, the studio is open for visitors.

For over two hundred years the Brandywine Valley region has attracted artists, including James Brade Sword, Jasper Cropsey, William T. Richards, Herman Herzog, George Cope, Edward Moran, and many others. The still extant Turner’s Mill in Chadds Ford was the location for the summer school of famed illustrator and teacher Howard Pyle. N. C. Wyeth was inspired by Pyle to settle in Chadds Ford, where he raised his remarkably talented family, and where his artist son Andrew and grandson Jamie Wyeth have also lived.

For forty years the Brandywine River Museum has fulfilled its mission to collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret artistic and historical objects related to the Brandywine region, including the art of the Wyeth family, American illustration, landscape, and still life painting.

Intrigued by pigs? Not many of us are, but in the steady eyes and paint brush of Jamie Wyeth, pigs are one of God’s most enchanting creations.

Take the 2,200-pound porker Den-Den who one day ransacked Wyeth’s painting station on the Ball Farm near his home in Chadds Ford. Snorting wildly, she appeared at a corner of the barn, her snout plastered with cerulean blue, cadmium orange and lemon yellow. Den-Den had just swallowed 22 tubes of oil paint.

“The next day I arrived in the morning and I was expecting to find a corpse,” Wyeth recalled with a laugh. “She was perfectly fine, snorting away, and of course, all these rainbow color droppings were everywhere.”

Months later Den-Den was ticketed to the local butcher. Wyeth thought, “My God I can’t have that.” So he took her to live at his Point Lookout farm where she became the infamous subject of his life-size “Portrait of Pig.”

Wyeth’s love for animals is quite evident in the artist’s new show “Farm Work” on display at the Brandywine River Museum through Sept. 11. It is a cracker of an exhibition, encompassing so much of the artist’s personality, humor, wit and sense of wonder. The extensive collection surveys four decades of a mix of farm animals, equipment, buildings and landscapes at Wyeth and his wife Phyllis’ farm on the Brandywine River as well as his farm on Southern Island off the coast of Maine.

No ‘Farmer in the Dell’

His first exhibition to focus exclusively on this subject, the show includes over 70 works drawn from private and public collections across the country.

“I stay away from the cuteness, the ‘Farmer in the Dell’ thing,” Wyeth explained. “There is a definite life span on a farm. It’s reality. I try to capture the animal on the move, not getting the animal frozen. I really do get a sense of who the animal is.

“I always said that if born in New York, I would be painting cabs or something, but it happens that I was raised in an area where there were farms. There are wonderful objects on the farm and things about farm life, so that is where the attraction is.”