N. C. Wyeth: A Biography
By David Michaelis
Alfred A. Knopf, $40
ISBN 0679426264

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David Michaelis notes, in this handsomely illustrated and carefully detailed biography, that the artist acclaimed as "dean of American illustrators" did not want to think that his future reputation depended upon his narrative painting. Even though, by 1942, his name "was stamped on the spines of a long shelf of literature, more than a hundred volumes," Newell Convers Wyeth still felt -- after 40 years of picture making -- that "everything he had done seemed insufficient."

Part of the reason for that sense of inadequacy was that, all his life, N.C. Wyeth wanted "to shake the dust of the illustrator" from his shoes and emerge into the art world as a "real" painter. Following Wyeth's death, October 19, 1945, in a car-train collision, the magnitude of his work still appeared ambiguous -- if not misunderstood. The Washington, D.C., Evening Star wrote: "Thousands of people admired his achievements without comprehending why they were good. On the other hand, he was a painter's painter, an illustrator's illustrator."

But those qualities that made him supreme as an illustrator are just those qualities that distinguish Wyeth as a "real" painter. Through his narrative paintings for Treasure Island (1911) to those in The Yearling (1939) -- in masterpiece after masterpiece of illustration -- Wyeth thrilled the viewer "with the danger and excitement of seeing 'everything all at once.'"

In his own words, from an article from the Boston Sunday Globe magazine: "In my own life I try to live the life that I depict. Some may wonder how I can live the life of the 12th century, which most of my costumed romance represents. All I can say is that the elemental feelings of long ago are identical with our own.

The costumes and accessories of the 12th century may be different, but the sunlight on a bronzed face, the winds that blow across the marshlands, the moon illuminating the old hamlets of medieval England, the rain-soaked travelers of King Arthur's day passing across the moors are strictly contemporaneous in feeling. The farmer swinging a scythe uses the same muscles, experiences the same sensations as we do today. But you've got to do these things to understand them."

Robert Jones is a freelance writer in Warrensburg, Missouri.