Newell Convers Wyeth (1882 - 1945). Newell Convers Wyeth, known as N. C. Wyeth, was an American artist and illustrator. He was the pupil of artist Howard Pyle and became one of America's greatest illustrators. During his lifetime, 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. He is the father of Andrew Wyeth and the grandfather of Jamie Wyeth, both well-known American painters. Wyeth was born in 1882, in Massachusetts to parents Andrew Newell Wyeth II and Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth. An ancestor, Nicholas Wyeth, a stonemason, came to Massachusetts from England in 1645. Later ancestors were prominent participants in the French and Indian Wars, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War, passing down rich oral histories and tradition to Wyeth and his family and providing subject matter for his art, which was deeply felt. His maternal ancestors came from Switzerland, and during her childhood, his mother was acquainted with literary giants Henry David Thoreau and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His literary appreciation and artistic talents appear to have come from her. He was the oldest of four brothers who spent much time hunting, fishing, and enjoying other outdoor pursuits, and doing chores on their farm. His varied youthful activities and his naturally astute sense of observation later aided the authenticity of his illustrations and obviated the need for models: When I paint a figure on horseback, a man plowing, or a woman buffeted by the wind, I have an acute sense of the muscle strain. His mother encouraged his early inclination toward art. Wyeth was doing excellent watercolor paintings by the age of twelve. He went to Mechanics Arts School to learn drafting, and then Massachusetts Normal Art School, now Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where painting instructor Richard Andrew advised him to become an illustrator, and then the Eric Pape School of Art to learn illustration, under George Loftus Noyes and Charles W. Reed. 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 20-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 Native American culture. When his money was stolen, he worked as a mail carrier, riding between the Two Grey Hills, NM trading post and Fort Defiance, AZ, 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 Indian clothing. His early trips to the western United States inspired a period of images of cowboys and Native Americans that dramatized the Old West. Upon returning to Chadds Ford, he painted a series of farm scenes for Scribner's, finding the landscape less dramatic than that of the West but nonetheless a rich environment for his art: Everything lies in its subtleties, everything is so gentle and simple, so unaffected. His painting Mowing, 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.