Lot 51
  • 51

N.C. Wyeth 1882 - 1945

Estimate
500,000 - 700,000 USD
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Description

  • N.C. Wyeth
  • The Boy Columbus on the Wharf at Genoa (The Vision of Columbus)
  • signed N.C. Wyeth (lower right)
  • oil on canvas
  • 40 by 29 inches
  • (101.6 by 73.7 cm)
  • Painted in 1917.

Provenance

Dr. Charles H. Thurber, Boston, Massachusetts (acquired from the artist)
By descent to the present owners (his great-grandchildren)

Literature

Alexis Everett Frye, New Geography, Book One, Boston, Massachusetts, 1917, illustrated as a frontispiece
Unidentified music book (as The Vision of Columbus)
Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N.C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals, New York, 1972, p. 205
Christine B. Podmaniczky, N.C. Wyeth: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 2008, vol. I, no. I. 676, p. 352, illustrated

Catalogue Note

N.C. Wyeth executed The Boy Columbus on the Wharf at Genoa in 1917 during the height of the period that is today known as the Golden Age of Illustration. By this time, Wyeth had achieved success as an illustrator after studying at Howard Pyle’s eponymous school and selling his first drawing to The Saturday Evening Post in 1903. He gained further recognition when he received a commission from Charles Scribner & Sons to illustrate Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in 1911. Wyeth’s career continued to flourish until his death in 1945, by which time he had created nearly 4,000 illustrations for books and magazines.

Ginn and Company commissioned the present picture for the frontispiece illustration of Alexis Everett Frye's textbook New Geography, Book One. This publication also includes several illustrations by Thornton Oakley, a fellow artist who studied alongside Wyeth at Howard Pyle’s school in Wilmington, Delaware. Pyle taught his students to strive for authenticity in illustrations: “After you have chosen a general subject,” he said, “submit it to the crucible of your own imagination and let it evolve into the picture. Project your mind into it. Identify yourself with the people and sense, that is, feel and smell the things naturally belonging there” (as cited in John Edward Dell, Visions of Adventure: N.C. Wyeth and the Brandywine Artists, New York, 2000, p. 12).

In The Boy Columbus on the Wharf at Genoa Wyeth achieves this notion of convincing illustration, instilling the composition with historical realism and details that transport the viewer back in time. He depicts a young Christopher Columbus sitting beside the medieval harbor in the explorer’s hometown of Genoa, Italy. Clad in period clothing, the boy stares into the distance with a look of determination – perhaps envisioning the New World and dreaming of the adventures that await him. While Columbus is undoubtedly the focal point of the composition, Wyeth successfully employs the tools of light and color to highlight other aspects of the scene, such as the rippling ocean, and enhance the visual appeal of the painting. Wyeth returned to Columbus as the subject for several of his later illustrations, each time conjuring the spirit of adventure and exploration for which he is most celebrated.

The original owner of The Boy Columbus on the Wharf at Genoa, Dr. Charles H. Thurber, was then the Editor-in-Chief of Ginn & Company, the Boston publishing company that produced New Geography, which illustrated the present work as a frontispiece. Likely through these types of commissions, Dr. Thurber and N.C. Wyeth became good friends, and corresponded extensively over the years.