Art: The Greatest Illustrator

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Time was when fathers often passed the craft of painting on to their children, and sometimes created artistic dynasties of the first order. Some of the greatest painters of the Renaissance grew great at home. The practice never took hold in the rough and tumble of American life, though Revolutionary War Hero Charles Willson Peale did raise two painting sons, one of whom, first-named Raphaelle, surpassed the father. But the 20th century does offer an outstanding example of an American artist following in his father's footsteps. The one is Andrew Wyeth (TIME, Jan. 7), at 40 the most revered young realist and perhaps the highest-paid painter in America. His father, N. C. (for Newell Convers) Wyeth, was half-forgotten until last week, when an exhibition at Manhattan's Knoedler Galleries restored him to his rightful place in the nation's art history.

N. C. Wyeth was an illustrator; for decades before his death in an auto crash in 1945, he was the best illustrator in the country. An age that tends to value "composition" (meaning, roughly, an apparent rhythm, repetition and balance of lines and colors, comparable to harmonious music) above all else tends to belittle illustration (which subordinates all other values to imaginative drama). Yet, historically, illustration is half of art, and the greatest paintings of Europe have been illustrations of classical mythology and the New Testament.

Wyeth himself would have laughed at being compared in any way to the old masters. Not Ovid or the Apostle John, but men such as Daniel Defoe, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne inspired his brush. He painted for children chiefly—half the time for the publishing house of Scribner, which has sold some 1,700,000 of his "Illustrated Classics," from Treasure Island (1911) to The Yearling (1939). Thirteen are still in print, and the set as a whole is a living monument to a magnificent artist.

Wyeth was a wildly uneven painter, swayed and disheveled by every wind that blew. His work shows every influence he met, from the meticulous refinement of his teacher Howard Pyle to the dashing violence of Frederic Remington, from turn-of-the-century impressionism to strict realism of the sort practiced by his son. His "easel pictures"—landscapes and figure pieces done for pleasure between illustrating assignments—were his worst. As some men can dance well only to brilliant music, Wyeth painted at his best only when inspired by a timeless tale.

The classic Rip Van Winkle, which Wyeth illustrated for David McKay Co. in 1921, moved him to greatness. Wyeth's paintings of young, virile Rip retreating from his termagant wife to spend a day in the hills (opposite), and of old Rip's return after a 20-year sleep of enchantment to find his house silent and deserted (see overleaf), are as classic as the story. They have nothing in common with the works of the great French illustrator Gustave Dore, or with the Englishmen Cruikshank and Tenniel, except genius. In the U.S., no other illustrator ever achieved such a poignant mingling of psychological truth and natural mystery. Perhaps even more than Washington Irving's tale the pictures tell the weird swiftness of human life.