The Brandywine Museum of Art’s new exhibit, By Design: The Worlds of Betsy James Wyeth, is opening Saturday, June 27. According to Will Coleman, the Brandywine Museum of Art’s Wyeth Foundation Curator and Director of the Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center, the exhibit is “a complex story about creative partnership.”
That partnership, of course, was that of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, who were together for decades, from their marriage in May of 1940 until Andrew died in 2009. Betsy was active as Andrew’s business manager and muse, contributing to his artistic endeavors and the establishment of the Brandywine Museum of Art, known at the time as the Brandywine River Museum of Art.
“This is a story that might be more common, might exist in other places. We can think of other stories of artists and their better halves who made what they did possible,” Coleman said, noting Edward Hopper and his wife, Joan.
He added that those stories might get “swept under the rug” because of a lack of evidence or documentation, but the story of the Wyeths is different.
“Here we have the receipts, the documentation, and we have the sites, the environments that Betsy James Wyeth shaped and that Andrew Wyeth depicted. There’s a story [that] their son Jamie Wyeth said that ‘she could have cop-signed his paintings.’”
And Coleman added, “It was the most entangled, complicated, and rich creative partnerships in the history of art.” The exhibit “fleshes out the story of how Betsy Wyeth shaped and defined what we think of as an Andrew Wyeth painting.”
The exhibit is on the third-floor gallery, and Coleman said he envisions people walking around the gallery in a counterclockwise direction, and the first thing a visitor sees is a recreation of an interior environment designed by Betsy Wyeth, the dining room of their home at Brinton’s Mill off Creek Road in Birmingham Township.
Coleman said the scene combines the old and the new. There are antique objects that feel “rooted in place in Southeastern Pennsylvania, but there’s also a sense of clean, while walls…There is also a depiction of that room in particular by Andrew Wyeth, after Betsy Wyeth finished her contribution…This is a classic example of how they work together.”
Also in the exhibit is a two-walled video of various locations, from Brinton’s Mill here and several sites in Maine. The exhibit is also on display in two museums up there since the Wyeths spend half their time in Maine.
Those Maine scenes include the Olsen property where Andrew painted “Christina’s World,” and various small islands in Maine.
“These small islands are difficult to get to,” Coleman said, “So, the next best thing is to come into this gallery at the Brandywine and to just bask in the sounds of the waves and the seagulls and take in the moods of this beautiful place.”
The display also includes Maga’s Daughter, the famous portrait that Andy did of Betsy in 1966. There are also sketches and more Wyeth paintings that Betsy inspired, and books that she compiled of the family works, including the book “The Wyeths” by N. C. Wyeth.
After viewing the exhibit at the gallery, the press corps was given a brief tour of Brinton’s Mill, the property that Andrew and Betsy Wyeth called home for decades, beginning in the 1960s.
Coleman told a story of when the couple first married, they lived in the upper story of what is now called the Andrew Wyeth Studio on Murphy Road in Chadds Ford. When Brinton’s Mill was up for sale, they bought the property and lived in the upper floor of what is called the granary before the house was built.
Jumping ahead to 2021, Coleman said the granary flooded so badly from Hurricane Ida that water was six inches above the second-story floor.
The granary is currently the only building open for tours at Brinton’s Mill because of damage to the other buildings — the mill itself and the home. Those buildings are currently being restored from the flooding.
The tours will be on Fridays, beginning July 3 and going through Nov. 20. However, many, if not most, of the tour times are already sold out.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
