Almost one hundred years after he painted it, N.C. Wyeth’s largest mural has been restored to its former glory thanks to Jamie Wyeth – the third generation of the legendary American art dynasty and N.C.’s grandson.
“It’s really come home, to a certain degree,” says Jamie on a phone call with Forbes. The mural which stretches some 60 feet wide and stands almost 20 feet tall, entitled Apotheosis of the Family was completed by Newell Convers Wyeth in 1932. It was originally commissioned to hang in the Wilmington Savings Fund Society, where the hope was that it would inspire prosperity and ingenuity during a time of economic downturn. After gracing the bank’s walls for nearly 75 years it came down and was stored in a state that didn’t exactly honor its historical significance. “It had been totally abused,” says Jamie, plainly.
It came under the possession of Jamie and his late wife, Phyllis–a prominent philanthropist and oft depicted subject of Jamie’s work–and the pair tried to place it with a museum; to find it a fitting home. But displaying such a sizable work of art proved tricky, and nowhere was equipped with the space. “Phyllis and I wanted the mural, but we thought, where the hell would we put it?” Jamie says, with a warm chuckle. That’s when his close friend, Caroline O’Neal Ryan suggested a round barn. “I’ve always just loved Shaker round barns,” says Jamie, noting a similar structure at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont.
And so it was decided: Jamie sought to build a round barn on his sprawling farm in Chadds Ford Pennsylvania, just a mile away from the studios of N.C. and Jamie’s father, Andrew, both of which are features at the Brandywine Museum.
A Homecoming of Epic Proportions
What resulted was years of work spent building the round barn itself, and meticulously restoring the mural which was, at times, both suspenseful and highly precarious. “We thought, maybe there’d be nothing left of it,” says Jamie. “We did this big unrolling I thought, this could just be like [paint] potato chips flying through the air.” And so with their breath held and humidifiers going, Jamie and a team of restorationists, led by Kristin deGhetaldi, carefully unrolled the mural. In a space Jamie likened to an airplane hanger owned by Atelier Fine Art Services in New Castle Delaware, the mural was seen for the first time in almost two decades. “It was in remarkably good shape,” says Jamie. deGhetaldi and her husband got to work restoring the massive piece, lying prostrate for much of the restoration because the sheer size of the mural made hanging it to restore untenable. “Kristin and her husband had to create these sort of platforms that they could lay over top of it and lie on their stomachs and work on it,” says Jamie. “Because it couldn’t be hung. I mean, it weighed so much!”
Then there was the matter of building and lighting the round barn–an undertaking that found Jamie, through a strike of coincidence, phoning a specialist with a rather interesting client list. “A friend of mine suggested, ‘Oh, I have this person who lights our outdoor Christmas tree,’ and I just remember thinking, what the hell? I don’t need a Christmas tree lighter!” Jamie laughs. “And then thank God–it turned out to be this guy whose entire business is to mount these massive concerts, like Beyonce, that have to go up and come down in a day.” Not only did he end up lighting the barn, but mounting the entire piece. “He was so excited about it, it just worked out great.”
He also got a helping hand from Delaware’s Secretary of Agriculture who called Jamie down to his office on a hot July day to talk about the project. This meeting was likewise serendipitous. He regaled Jamie with stories of growing up and seeing the mural in the bank as a boy. Using his expertise, he helped ensure the barn was erected as a piece of agro-tourism–joining nine other round barns in Delaware.
“It really was such a collaborative effort,” says Jamie. He hopes the barn, like N.C. and Andrew’s studios will be open to the public with limited admission for guided tours. Visitors will find themselves fully absorbed in Wyeth’s world–entering through Jamie’s working farm complete with grazing horses and stables, and into the round barn, which is an immersive experience in and of itself. The mural, comprising five panels, is hung in the round, practically enveloping viewers. “You almost become part of the mural,” says Jamie. “It feels like you’re a participant, it’s just extraordinary.”
The barn is otherwise quite stark creating a delicate and surreal balance; this vibrant, larger than life mural juxtaposed with the sterile space. “It’s such a strange painting, it’s peculiar,” says Jamie of the mural’s subject–a fantastical imagining of, among other figures, Wyeth’s family members. This includes Jamie’s father Andrew, who features in the painting as a young child; beside him is Andrew’s older sister Carolyn–but depicted as an infant, younger than Andrew in the painting. “It’s all mixed up, but that’s the attraction in it,” says Jamie. “It’s just this incredible fantasy.”
An American Dynasty
His grandfather’s imagination is one Jamie has an apparent admiration for; in addition to being a fine artist, N.C. had a prolific career as one of America’s most well known illustrators. “This is a man who never went to the Caribbean. He never went to Europe. Everything was created within the four walls of that studio,” says Jamie. “He created this magical world that just enchanted children and older people over the years of the Scribner Classic books. And, you know, it was all in his head.”
Jamie, born only a year after his grandfather died, says that though they never met, N.C.’s legacy left an enduring impression on both him and his work. “As a child, I would spend hours up in his studio, which was left as if he’d walked out the hour before,” he says.
“And in it were most of his illustrations all stacked up in this back room of Robin Hood and Treasure Island, all these incredible works, and I would just pour over these things. Then as the evening would come, I’d walk back down the hill to our house, which was my father’s studio where he’d be painting a dead crow or something,” says Jamie, cracking up.
The ability to seamlessly marry the beautiful with the peculiar is a Wyeth dynasty trademark, exemplified in N.C.’s surrealist mural. Jamie’s own paintings depict everything from bucolic life on the Maine island where he lives in a lighthouse, to maudlin scenes of pumpkins and seagulls. (During the phone call Jamie joked the gulls were just outside the window, waiting for him.)
Parallel Worlds
In fact, as Jamie was undertaking some of the final preparations on the round barn, a collection of his own work was being shown at the legendary Schoelkopf gallery in New York City: never before seen portraits of Andy Warhol and Rudolph Nureyev.
“There was in a sense, a sort of parallel with the mural that was remarkable,” says Jamie of the simultaneous reincarnation of N.C. ‘s mural and his own works. “I had not seen these works for quite a few years, and Phyllis, my wife, had literally stolen them from me, and hid them. I’m assuming she just didn’t want me to sell them!” He says that as he worked on these pieces, Phyllis must have taken them and stashed them away for safekeeping; it wasn’t until 2023 that Jamie came across them. “I literally found them in a closet,” he says laughing. “They were in a big box, this enormous sort of suitcase type thing!”
The trove of hidden art showcases a rarefied and intimate glimpse at some of the most iconic figures of the 20th Century and transported Jamie back in time. “It was so interesting because it was a real rediscovery of that period of my life,” he says. “I’d completely forgotten about most of them and obviously it brought back memories pretty vividly looking at them.”
The visceral portraits join Jamie’s existing collection of works depicting Nureyev and Warhol; Warhol famously completed a portrait of Jamie, as well.
Both giants in their industry, Warhol and Nureyev remain, to this day, instantly recognizable figures. Their iconic visages captured in myriad ways over the years. Still, Jamie’s renderings of them stand alone–they draw something singular out of these two men. Warhol in particular, Jamie remarks, was a very shy person.
“I saw Vincent Fremont recently [who worked with Andy at the factory] and he said, ‘You seem to have caught something about Andy which most people didn’t see.’ And Andy was extremely private, and mysterious in many ways.” Warhol comfortably welcomed Jamie into his insular world, as did Nureyev. “They let me into their lives and I was completely immersed,” he says.
In speaking with Jamie about these relationships and about his relationship with his art, it’s apparent why these revered but opaque figures were at ease around Jamie. He is as jovial as he is disarming; down to earth, kind, and good humored without ever being saccharine or self aggrandizing. As he reflects on the confluence of these two occasions–the erecting of the round barn and the the unearthing of of these portraits–he evokes a particular reverence for the medium; one that is refreshing in a world evolving at a breakneck speed away from the patiently rewarding practice of fine art.
N.C. ‘s mural harkens back to a time when economic strife necessitated optimism, and art was used to stoke hope. Jamie’s portraits stir a nostalgia for an era of art, music, theater, and celebrity that feels especially aspirational today. In this way, they both convey the perennial value of art. Jamie explains, this is power that painting and its singularity offers unlike any other art form.
“Of all the disciplines, I think painting is almost the most highly personal,” he says. “You have no editors, no orchestra, no equipment, no cameras. It’s just a stick with hair on the end of it, a piece of cloth, and paint. So as a consequence what’s produced is very individual.” And it’s that unique experience, he says, that keeps people coming back year after year to museums around the world–and hopefully soon, to the round barn in kind. “[With paintings,] it’s an edition of one. There it is, with the fingerprints and the pieces of hair–it’s really quite exciting.”