Jamie WyethCritiques

A fun photo essay of Jamie Wyeth's paintings of dogs, with his own annotations.

Amazing

Described at its publication (1980) as "the first comprehensive guide to the work of Jamie Wyeth", this slim landscape format paperback contains about 125 full-colour full-page plates of the artist's paintings, including a few which show a detail section of the of selected paintings. The paintings are arranged according to subject such as Sitters, Shapes, Pigs and Things, The Sea and more. The plates are simply captioned with the title, full details of each painting are to be found at the back of the book. Beyond a page of introductory text to each section that sums up the contents of this book.

The plates are shown as large as the pages will reasonable permit; the colour reproduction is generally good although the dark areas lack detail (although not having seen the original this may be an unfair comment), but the images are crisp.

This beautifully illustrated book, published for a 1998 exhibition by the same name, focuses on the evocative, sometimes mysterious and occasionally spooky works of four Pennsylvania artists: Howard Pyle, NC Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. These artists form a continuum in the Brandywine Valley, beginning with the teacher, noted illustrator Pyle, and continuing with his student, illustrator NC Wyeth, Wyeth's son Andrew, and Andrew's son Jamie. While spotlighting each artist's more fanciful pieces, it also provides visual testimony to the transcendent quality of the work of Andrew Wyeth, which many critics erroneously judge to be simple landscapes of a bygone era, when they are in fact far more than simply representational. The book includes beautiful full-color illustrations of many works not generally seen, especially among those by Jamie Wyeth, and includes an introduction that outlines the Brandywine River tradition and the way each artist relates to it and to each other. Other essays by various authors (including Betsy James Wyeth) focus on each artist. Although it emphasizes images over text, it is an outstanding book for those who admire these artists' work, or those who would like to learn more about them.

Beautiful coffee-table book with a strong historical narrative, biographical about this highly talented family. Informative with lots of illustrations of the many fascinating subjects painted by the Wyeths and other early fabulous painters.