Sometimes father and son pursue the same career, just like Senior and Shrub, Kirk and Michael, Woody and Arlo. And the Wyeths. Like father, like son, right? A trip to Brandywine River Museum left me less certain.
After weeks of driving around the rural, winter Pennsylvania countryside, a pilgrimage to Chadds Ford (the area of Pennsylvania that inspired Andrew Wyeth) became inevitable. One weekend I was in Chester County photographing farms like this one
And the next I was visiting farms made famous by Andrew Wyeth like this one
I arrived at the "Wyeth well" early on a Saturday afternoon. At the Brandywine River Museum, I hadn’t expected to be pulled to the river first, but given the abundance of glass that only minimally separates the museum from its surroundings, nature competes with the gallery interiors. Outside each gallery, a southerly wall of glass allows views of the gently flowing Brandywine River.
After spending some time on the banks of the river, I moved inside the converted mill, and over the next few hours grew in my conviction that very small, intimate museums often give me more of a reason to pause than the d’Orsays or MoMAs. The Brandywine seems to exist for just that reason: to provide the thoughtful art viewer an intimate place to look and and reflect.
And there’s plenty to consider as you ponder the grandfather, NC, who illustrated James Fenimore Cooper novels, the son, Andrew, who painted rural scenes of his Pennsylvania and Maine neighbors over and over again, and the grandson, Jamie, who followed Nyurev’s career. For me, not all Wyeths are created equal; only Andrew’s work has a haunting quality that transcends time and dimension.
Nonetheless, upon returning from the land of Wyeth, I had to know more about all these men. In researching the family, I came upon a fact tying the Wyeths to this blog of acoustic memories: NC’s engineer son fathered a musician who played on Dylan’s Hard Rain. Howard Wyeth, along with others including Joan Baez, Kinky Friedman and T-Bone Burnett, were part of the Rolling Thunder Revue.
Not a word was spoke between us there was little risk involved/
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved/
Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm/
“Come in” she said/
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
"Shelter from the Storm"
-Bob Dylan
