The house and studio are part of the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum. Upon arrival at the museum, you can purchase a ticket for the tour and then ride over on the shuttle bus. Our guide (a retired art teacher) was at the house to greet us.
The grounds are absolutely beautiful. In 1911, with the proceeds from his illustrations of Treasure Island, Wyeth purchased the land and built the house and studio. The tour started with a walk through the house.
The photo above is NC with his wife Carolyn (known as Carol) and their five children. None of the family is alive today. The home and studio were passed to the Conservancy upon the death of daughter Carolyn, an artist who lived at the home her entire life and worked and taught classes in the studio.
Even after the home got electricity, NC insisted the family continue to dine by candlelight.
Carol had quite the dish collection and was clearly a blue and white lover like myself.
Upstairs are NC and Carol's bedrooms as well as the kids rooms. Some of the rooms were built on as the family expanded.
Next we moved on to the studio. I have to tell you, this building is enormous. At least three times the size of my apartment! We started in an entryway that contained books and props.
Portrait of Andrew Wyeth ( Andrew is currently having a centennial year exhibition in the museum).
We then walked into the actual studio. It is amazing. All the books, props and supplies look like someone just finished painting. The museum is doing a great job of preserving the space.
It was impossible to get a good shot, but in the corner hangs NC's paint covered smock. I wonder if anyone will want a picture of mine someday!?
Portrait of Carolyn Wyeth.
Can you believe these frames? They are beautiful. There were a bunch of them just hanging around.
This is the most amazing contraption. It is so large that I could not get a photo of the whole thing. It is a staircase on wheels. NC used it to work on very large paintings. He could just walk up and down and move the whole thing to wherever he needed. Considering I'm suffering through an 18x24 right now, this is pretty impressive!
Our last stop was the prop room, which was more like the prop apartment. The room is enormous and filled with all of the props needed for paintings and illustrations.
After the tour we went back to the museum to see the Andrew Wyeth show. I hope you enjoyed this look into the Wyeth home and studio. It makes me very happy to see art studios being preserved for generations of artists and art lovers to visit. I will have a separate post up soon to show you some of the work from Andrew's exhibition.
