Newell Convers Wyeth

 

Buttonwood Farm, 1919

Oil on canvas

The Morris House, Port Clyde, ca. 1937, Oil on canvas
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Newell Convers Wyeth (October 22, 1882 – October 19, 1945), known as N. C. Wyeth, was an American painter and illustrator. He was the pupil of Howard Pyle and became one of America's most well-known illustrators. Wyeth created more than 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books — 25 of them for Scribner's, the Scribner Classics, which is the body of work for which he is best known.

The first of these, Treasure Island, was one of his masterpieces and the proceeds paid for his studio. Wyeth was a realist painter at a time when the camera and photography began to compete with his craft.

Sometimes seen as melodramatic, his illustrations were designed to be understood quickly.

 Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, and said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other."