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An Episcopal, co-educational 100% boarding school in Middletown, Delaware for grades 9 – 12

Victoria Wyeth Delivers the Joan Whitney Payson History of Art Lecture
By AK White and Emma Hunter '25

Art historian and lecturer Victoria Wyeth stopped by to unpack more than a century of Wyeth American art.

Every St. Andrean knows “The Mural,” the astonishing painted wall in the Dining Hall that depicts, on the right, a meeting of the minds as the school’s founder, A. Felix du Pont, confers with trustees and then-head of school Rev. Walden Pell II on his founding vision of the school; and, on the left, that vision come to life in the form of St. Andrew’s students. The mural was painted by N.C. Wyeth between 1936 and 1938. And until last Friday, Jan. 10, the artist’s great-granddaughter, Victoria Wyeth, a photographer, art lecturer and historian, had never seen it. 

“I had never seen it before,” Wyeth told students. “Obviously, I'd heard about it. It's incredibly significant to my uncle [Jamie Wyeth] because my uncle was married to a woman named Phyllis Mills, and Phyllis's grandfather, Mr. [A. Felix] Du Pont, started the school and is actually depicted on the right side of the mural. I think for my family, we just love the idea that all of you guys are sitting there dining amongst museum pieces, and not just the Wyeth. You have those Schoonovers. [Frank] Schoonover was another gentleman and artist who studied alongside N.C. Wyeth under [Delaware artist] Howard Pyle. You guys are really living in a museum.”

Wyeth was on campus to give the annual Joan Whitney Payson History of Art Lecture, in which she unpacked the legacy and history of N.C. Wyeth, her grandfather Andrew Wyeth, and her uncle, Jamie Wyeth, a contemporary realist.

Prior to taking the stage in Engelhard Hall, Wyeth gathered with students and employees in the Warner Art Gallery for dinner. There, she set the tone for the evening, which hummed along on her self-deprecating humor and transparency. “I have no artistic ability to paint and draw at all,” she told students, laughing. “I stick to giving lectures.”

Rotating between the tables, Wyeth took the time to talk to everyone present, sharing personal anecdotes about her life in lecturing as well as her life outside of Wyeth history, like the time she missed a question on her Ph.D application to Harvard. “But had I gone there, I never would have been on this track,” she told students. “ ... life is going to throw you all this terrible stuff, and it's really what you do with it.”

Wyeth proved to those at the dinner that it doesn’t matter who you are, you can still get nervous when faced with the challenge of speaking to an audience that may or may not be interested in what you have to say. “It doesn't matter if I'm speaking to prisoners, or students, or the president of Poland, I get equally nervous because this is my one shot to really talk [to people who] don't know about my family's art and try and make it interesting.”

As it turned out, it was an unfounded fear—the lecture portion of the evening was punctuated by multiple outbursts of laughter by the audience in response to Wyeth’s energy,

style, and personal stories.

“I’ve spent 30 years studying my family,” Wyeth said as she took the stage. “So I’m going to tell you what these artists were actually thinking, not what some art teacher thinks they were thinking.”

Throughout the evening, Wyeth dug into more than a century of Wyeth art, pointing out interesting aspects of each work.

“My great-grandfather painted his life,” she said. To illustrate the point, she showed students the continuity in his work, like a bowl of his mother’s that he painted in the background of multiple works, including scenes in the1920 illustrated volume Robinson Crusoe to "The Recipe Book," a portrait of his wife using the same bowl in their kitchen.

Wyeth spoke animatedly about her uncle, Jamie Wyeth, who shared her macabre sense of humor and who was no stranger to spending time in morgues to master how to draw the nonliving. One of his most famous paintings, his portrait of former president John F. Kennedy, was commissioned when Wyeth was only 20. However, the work he produced wasn’t quite what the Kennedy family had in mind when they approached Wyeth to paint the posthumous portrait. “His brother, Bobby, didn’t like it, because he said it reminded him too much of how Kennedy looked during the Bay of Pigs [crisis],” Wyeth noted. 

When Wyeth turned to Andrew Wyeth, she grew emotional speaking about “Andy,” the grandfather with whom she was very close. “He was all big ears and wool sweaters and so cute I just wanted to pinch his cheeks,” she said. She said he would grow frustrated with the idea of art having “rules,” particularly if he was asked to talk about those “rules.” “Everything I have to say is already on the walls,” she remembered him saying. Wyeth was a master of the ancient medium of egg tempera, in which he mixed his pigments with egg yolk.

Wyeth highlighted "Christina’s World," one of Andrew’s most famous works, which features his oft-muse, Christina Olson, perched at the bottom of a hill, looking toward her house at the top. Olson, who was paralyzed from the waist done, refused a wheelchair and chose to crawl everywhere. “Where other people look at this work and see sadness, I see hope and power,” she said.

Andrew Wyeth’s death in 2009 was difficult for Victoria Wyeth. “When I don’t know how to process, I take photos,” she said, which she did often as she grappled with the loss. “It’s what you do with that pain and sadness in life that’s important.” 

Before fielding questions from students, Wyeth ended her talk on a point of levity, recounting the time she asked Andrew Wyeth what the birds meant in his work. “What do you mean, ‘What do they mean?’” she recalled him asking. “‘They’re birds!’ “Sometimes,” she reminded students, “it’s okay if they’re just birds.”

The Joan Whitney Payson (1903-1975) History of Art Lecture Series is made possible through the generosity of Joanne and John Whitney Payson P’05 to honor the life of John’s mother, Joan Whitney Payson, and to celebrate the graduation of their daughter, Joan Payson ’05, from St. Andrew's.

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