Grant Wyeth

[KansasFreestater]

Newell Converse Wyeth was one of the greatest illustrators who ever lived. That's my opinion, and I would characterize my opinion as "immovable".

Ergo, your varying opinions are welcome and I will respect them. But, please don't anyone try to talk me out of my opinion, because, if you try, you will get nowhere!

By the way, I am quite certain the second version in this thread (in color) is the way Mr. Wyeth wanted us to see it. Ditto for the portrait of Sherman.

And if anyone wants to see who inspired Mr. Wyeth, you need look no further than Mr. Howard Pyle. Google up the term "Howard Pyle Illustrations" and prepare to be amazed.

....Just the ramblings of a career commercial artist who still does an illustration from time to time. But, no matter how hard I apply myself, mine are never quite up to their standards.

I had the privilege of working in editorial at an art magazine for several years -- favorite job I've ever had. Among the rewards of it was exposure to hosts of magnificent artists, living and dead. My own opinion is that the ranks of illustrators include some of the finest artists this country has produced.

 

[Nathanb1]

Oh, I'd forgotten about that brooding, hell's a-comin' to somebody, Jackson! Love it.

Make no mistake....it's a reckoning. Boy, does that fit. Not too fond of the head-Jackson was actually quite handsome. That sort of looks orc-ish. But it's pure Wyeth, for sure. The prophet looking down from the mountain!

 

[KansasFreestater]

I have to disagree with the part about the Lee name. It did, in fact, "hold him back" in many ways. The family was impoverished, had to rely on the rest of the family to scratch by, and probably exacerbated his mother's health problems. He was considered unsuitable, remember, by Custis as a match for his daughter. I have no reason to believe he wouldn't have faced the same opposition from other fathers, had he wanted to marry them. What Lee did is to make himself impervious to the scandal and spend his entire life trying to overcome (in his own mind, if not others) what his father and brother (don't forget THAT scandal, which in many ways is worse than Harry's) had done. The Grant name may not have done anything for Ulysses, but it didn't brand him. There is no burden, for someone who comes from a place where one's name is a key in who and what he is--like the burden of one's immediate family. Maybe it's a southern thing, but you are (were) known by who your family is/was.

Lecture over.

I agree with you that a famous name or family can be very constricting, even a prison, in some ways.

It's true that Grant's family was just a run-of-the-mill western middle-class family. However, poor Grant had lifelong "issues" related to his father, as did Lincoln, Sherman, Lee, Jeff Davis, I believe, and many others. We all have our family "stuff" to overcome. This is why all good biographies begin with the subject's parents.

 

[Nathanb1]

Newell Converse Wyeth was one of the greatest illustrators who ever lived. That's my opinion, and I would characterize my opinion as "immovable".

Ergo, your varying opinions are welcome and I will respect them. But, please don't anyone try to talk me out of my opinion, because, if you try, you will get nowhere!

By the way, I am quite certain the second version in this thread (in color) is the way Mr. Wyeth wanted us to see it. Ditto for the portrait of Sherman.

And if anyone wants to see who inspired Mr. Wyeth, you need look no further than Mr. Howard Pyle. Google up the term "Howard Pyle Illustrations" and prepare to be amazed.

....Just the ramblings of a career commercial artist who still does an illustration from time to time. But, no matter how hard I apply myself, mine are never quite up to their standards.

You don't have to convince me. I've seen a Pyle up close in personal in a home in San Angelo. They had to drag me out (I was touring the home--I had no idea it was there!) because all I could do is stand there and keep saying, "It's a Pyle! It's a Pyle!). I was honored to know Henriette Wyeth Hurd in her later years. The woman could create magic. Is it in the genes? Maybe. Must be.

 

[Nathanb1]

I agree with you that a famous name or family can be very constricting, even a prison, in some ways.

It's true that Grant's family was just a run-of-the-mill western middle-class family. However, poor Grant had lifelong "issues" related to his father, as did Lincoln, Sherman, Lee, Jeff Davis, I believe, and many others. We all have our family "stuff" to overcome. This is why all good biographies begin with the subject's parents.

Issue are one thing...being related to those guys was like--for a modern comparison--being Ted Bundy's kid and brother.

 

[Nathanb1]

I apologize. I'm not drunk...but I am having massive keyboard problems.

 

[Patrick H]

The eyes bother me, too, but I like it. That is melodrama, something Wyeth liked to capitalize on. But, nevertheless, Sherman was as determined as Grant and just a tiny bit nuts into the bargain - not insane, mind! It captures something about Sherman's feelings during the march.

You are reacting precisely the way Mr. Wyeth wanted you to react. That's why it is such a great illustration. You don't have to like it. Wyeth just wanted it to have an impact on you when you saw it....and it does.

 

[Patrick H]

I had the privilege of working in editorial at an art magazine for several years -- favorite job I've ever had. Among the rewards of it was exposure to hosts of magnificent artists, living and dead. My own opinion is that the ranks of illustrators include some of the finest artists this country has produced.

Freestater, I always enjoy your posts and you have just touched me once again. Yes! The great illustrators held their own against the finest gallery artists of all time. That fact is witnessed by their many originals which are now shown in galleries and academic collections everywhere.

You, my friend, had a very enviable job!

 

[Patrick H]

You don't have to convince me. I've seen a Pyle up close in personal in a home in San Angelo. They had to drag me out (I was touring the home--I had no idea it was there!) because all I could do is stand there and keep saying, "It's a Pyle! It's a Pyle!). I was honored to know Henriette Wyeth Hurd in her later years. The woman could create magic. Is it in the genes? Maybe. Must be.

That must have been a wonderful experience! I had a similar thing happen a couple of years ago when I ran into three
Carl Rungious originals in a house not too far from my own. I was fairly well thunderstruck and could barely pull myself away.

 

[Elennsar]

I love what Lincoln said when asked for his impressions after having met Grant:

"Well, I hardly know what to think of him. He's the quietest little fellow you ever saw. He makes the least fuss of any man I ever knew. I believe on several occasions he has been in this room a minute or so before I knew he was here. It's about so all around. The only evidence you have that he's in any particular place is that he makes things move."​

That really seems to sum up Grant's style. Not so much sneaky as just not dramatic except in his deeds.

I have to disagree with the part about the Lee name. It did, in fact, "hold him back" in many ways. The family was impoverished, had to rely on the rest of the family to scratch by, and probably exacerbated his mother's health problems. He was considered unsuitable, remember, by Custis as a match for his daughter. I have no reason to believe he wouldn't have faced the same opposition from other fathers, had he wanted to marry them. What Lee did is to make himself impervious to the scandal and spend his entire life trying to overcome (in his own mind, if not others) what his father and brother (don't forget THAT scandal, which in many ways is worse than Harry's) had done. The Grant name may not have done anything for Ulysses, but it didn't brand him. There is no burden, for someone who comes from a place where one's name is a key in who and what he is--like the burden of one's immediate family. Maybe it's a southern thing, but you are (were) known by who your family is/was.

Lecture over.

Oh certainly. But the poverty and Custis's reaction - was that worse than if Robert had simply been born to a have-nothing family like say Jackson?

I don't meant to make light of what his father and brother's acts had done to the Lee name, but the fact "the Lee name" means anything where it would matter that they tarnished it puts Lee ahead of the nobody family guys.

Still, no arguing that Lee didn't consciously and unconsciously labor under that image - Lee did not want to be like his father or brother, and defined who he did want to be around the strengths opposing their weaknesses.

What amazes me there I will admit is that Lee managed to understand that this was a thing worth doing in that environment. It would have been very easy to be more like his father's good days - trying to burnish the Lee name the way his father had been glorious - rather than choosing to model himself more on Washington.

But that's not what he did, and I assume his mother encouraged that.

 

[Nathanb1]

That must have been a wonderful experience! I had a similar thing happen a couple of years ago when I ran into three
Carl Rungious originals in a house not too far from my own. I was fairly well thunderstruck and could barely pull myself away.

It's an amazing experience! It's one thing to see things in a gallery where you expect them--it's another to bump into them in someone's home--in west Texas, for heaven's sake! Of course, that would be like finding out there were Sargent and Picasso prints under the guest room bed where my family stayed when we visited the in-laws. I thought there was just a model train under there! (We shall soon see what has happened to them--that will be a reckoning, I reckon).

 

[Northern Light]

He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.

-- Col. Theodore Lyman. in Meade's headquarters, 1863-1865;
letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox.​

That is the first thing that came to my mind as well!