American Art Collaborative

Best known for his vivid and exciting illustrations of American literary classics, N. C. Wyeth worked, for the last several years of his life, on a series of easel paintings exploring the quiet beauty of the country around his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The change in subject matter corresponds to a change in medium, in which Wyeth forsook the richness of oils for the luminosity of egg tempera. The combination of egg yolk and pure pigment, built up in translucent layers, gives "The Hupper Farm" the quality of a glowing, animate place, reflecting Wyeth's spiritual ties to the country in which he had spent his life.