Treasures from the Family: The Gift of Betsy James Wyeth
As we dive deeply into the rich creative life of Betsy James Wyeth in the By Design exhibition this summer, a complementary exhibition in the Strawbridge Family Gallery will also uncover her role as a curator and archivist of her family collection. Opening this spring, Treasures from the Family: The Gift of Betsy James Wyeth will consist of art and archival material from the major bequest Betsy left to the Brandywine Museum of Art upon her death in 2020.
Andrew and Betsy Wyeth were long-time supporters of the Museum. From the Museum's earliest days, the Wyeths were generous lenders of works of art by three generations of the family, and their role in transferring the N.C. Wyeth House & Studio, and later, the Andrew Wyeth Studio to the Museum’s care helped to transform the institution’s mission. The couple’s vision for the future led to the creation of the Museum’s Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Study Center, which also stewards the collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. In a final act of philanthropy, Betsy Wyeth planned a major gift of artworks to the Museum, along with the family’s rich trove of archival material.
Treasures from the Family highlights paintings previously owned by the Wyeths, many of which were on loan to Brandywine for decades. Paintings including N.C. Wyeth’s Self-Portrait with Palette (ca. 1909–1912) and Captain Nemo (1918) have frequently hung in the galleries, but will now make Brandywine their permanent home thanks to Betsy’s planning. In addition to these familiar paintings, other works in the bequest showcase moments in N.C.’s development, such as a teenage self-portrait, his experiments with impressionist brushwork, and examples of his early Western work that catapulted him to the top of the illustration field.
While the bequest primarily contains works by N.C., other members of the family, including Henriette, Carolyn, and Jamie Wyeth are represented as well. The exhibition will also include several paintings by Howard Pyle, whose work Andrew and Betsy enjoyed so much that they often gifted his paintings to one another.
In addition to guaranteeing the future care of the family’s art collection, Betsy ensured that her decades-long project of collecting and organizing the letters of N.C. Wyeth would be continued by the Brandywine’s Walter and Leonore Annenberg Research Center. Known officially as the “N.C. Wyeth Correspondence Collection of Betsy James Wyeth,” the collection consists of thousands of letters, photographs, and other unique items that range from records from N.C.’s birth in 1882 through the condolence messages after his death in 1945. Betsy collected these letters from disparate sources, catalogued them, and published a selection in her book The Wyeths: The Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901–1945.
A selection of these highly personal family documents and keepsakes will be included in the exhibition, connecting the private lives of the Wyeths to the paintings, many of which are well known to Brandywine visitors. Among these treasures is the first valentine given by N.C. Wyeth to his future wife, Carolyn Bockius, in 1904 before their marriage. A trove of family photographs, most taken by N.C. Wyeth himself, provides a glimpse of the talented Wyeth children as they grow up. His untimely death in 1945 shocked the family, who rushed to preserve many special mementos which are also part of this collection. N.C.’s last known correspondence with his son Andrew, written weeks before his death in 1945, will also be on view.
Treasures from the Family not only represents Betsy Wyeth’s research into her family history, but also her understanding that both the paintings and the archives work together to create a fuller, more contextual story of the Wyeths—not only as a remarkable group of artists, but as a family. Through her generosity, Betsy Wyeth has entrusted Brandywine with the care of art works and her collected family history, which will now be publicly accessible for both enjoyment and scholarship in perpetuity.