'' (1911) by
Robert Louis Stevenson '' (1922), by
Sidney Lanier Wyeth traveled to the
Brandywine Valley to study with
Howard Pyle, eventually settling in
Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. A bucking bronco for the cover of
The Saturday Evening Post on February 21, 1903, was Wyeth's first commission as an illustrator. That year he described his work as "true, solid American subjects—nothing foreign about them". It was a spectacular accomplishment for the twenty-year-old Wyeth, after just a few months under Pyle's tutelage. In 1904, the same magazine commissioned him to illustrate a Western story, and Pyle urged Wyeth to go West to acquire direct knowledge, much as
Zane Grey had done for his Western novels. In Colorado, he worked as a cowboy alongside the professional "punchers", moving cattle and doing ranch chores. He visited the
Navajo in Arizona and New Mexico and gained an understanding of aboriginal American culture. When his money was stolen, he worked as a mail carrier, riding between the Two Grey Hills, New Mexico trading post and
Fort Defiance, Arizona, to earn enough to get back home. He wrote home, "The life is wonderful, strange—the fascination of it clutches me like some unseen animal—it seems to whisper, 'Come back, you belong here, this is your real home. On a second trip two years later, he collected information on mining and brought home costumes and artifacts, including cowboy and aboriginal American clothing. His early trips to the western United States inspired a period of images of
cowboys and
aboriginal Americans that dramatized the
Old West. His painting
Mowing (1907), not done for illustration, was among his most successful images of rural life. In 1906, Wyeth had married Carolyn Brenneman Bockius of Wilmington. In 1908 they moved to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, along the Brandywine Creek. The Wyeths created a stimulating household for their talented children
Andrew Wyeth,
Henriette Wyeth Hurd,
Carolyn Wyeth,
Ann Wyeth McCoy, and
Nathaniel C. Wyeth. In 1937, Nathaniel would marry Howard Pyle's niece. Wyeth was very sociable, and frequent visitors included
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Joseph Hergesheimer,
Hugh Walpole,
Lillian Gish, and
John Gilbert. According to Andrew, who spent the most time with his father due to his sickly childhood, Wyeth was a strict but patient father who did not talk down to his children. His hard work as an illustrator gave his family the financial freedom to follow their own artistic and scientific pursuits. Andrew went on to become one of the foremost American painters of the second half of the 20th century, and both Henriette and Carolyn became painters also; Ann became a painter and composer. Nathaniel became an engineer for
DuPont and worked on the team that invented the plastic soda bottle. Henriette and Ann married two of Wyeth's protégés,
Peter Hurd and
John W. McCoy. Wyeth is the grandfather of painters
Jamie Wyeth and Michael Hurd, and the musician
Howard Wyeth. By 1911, Wyeth began to move away from Western subjects and on to illustrating classic literature. He painted a series for an edition of
Treasure Island (1911), by
Robert Louis Stevenson, thought by many to be his finest group of illustrations. The set made him famous, and the proceeds from this great success paid for his house and studio. He also illustrated editions of
Kidnapped (1913),
Robin Hood (1917),
The Last of the Mohicans (1919),
Robinson Crusoe (1920),
Rip Van Winkle (1921),
The White Company (1922), and
The Yearling (1939). He did work for prominent periodicals, including
Century, ''
Harper's Monthly, Ladies' Home Journal, McClure's, Outing, The Popular Magazine'', and
Scribner's. By 1914, Wyeth loathed the commercialism upon which he became dependent, and for the rest of his life he battled internally over his capitulation, accusing himself of having "bitched myself with the accursed success in skin-deep pictures and illustrations". He complained of money men "who want to buy me piecemeal" and that "an illustration must be made practical, not only in its dramatic statement, but it must be a thing that will adapt itself to the engravers' and printers' limitations. This fact alone kills that underlying inspiration to create thought. Instead of expressing that inner feeling, you express the outward thought… or imitation of that feeling." Wyeth also did posters, calendars, and advertisements for clients such as
Lucky Strike,
Cream of Wheat, and
Coca-Cola, as well as paintings of Beethoven, Wagner, and Liszt for
Steinway & Sons. He painted murals of historical and allegorical subjects for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Westtown School, the First National Bank of Boston, the Hotel Roosevelt, the Franklin Savings Bank, the National Geographic Society, the Wilmington Savings Fund Society, and other public and private buildings. During both World Wars, he contributed patriotic images to government and private agencies. Wyeth was a member of
The Franklin Inn Club in Philadelphia. His nonillustrative portrait and landscape paintings changed dramatically in style throughout his life as he experimented first with impressionism in the 1910s (feeling an affinity with the nearby "New Hope Group"), the principles of the divisionist painter
Giovanni Segantini, then by the 1930s veering to the realistic American regionalism of
Thomas Hart Benton and
Grant Wood, painting with thin oils and, occasionally, egg tempera. That was the medium favored by his son Andrew, and introduced to both of them by his son-in-law Peter Hurd. Wyeth worked rapidly and experimented constantly, often working on a larger scale than necessary, befitting his energetic and grand vision which often harked back to his ancestral past. He could conceive, sketch and paint a large painting in as little as three hours. Wyeth made four illustrations for a 1939 edition of Helen Hunt Jackson's
Ramona, a novel about a Scottish-Native American orphan living in Southern California after the Mexican-American War. The second illustration out of the four, depicting the tension between Ramona and her mother Señora Moreno, was found 80 years later in a Savers thrift store for $4 and sold for $191,000 at auction in 2023. ==Death and legacy==