The Brandywine River Art Museum is a small museum in Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania,
the home of the Wyeth family of painters for several generations. Works by all seven
members of the family are here, as well as special exhibits. The building was originally
an old mill on the Brandywine River. A modern addition with new galleries has been
added in back.
This is the beautiful sun-filled circular atrium connecting the two buildings
and offering views of the Brandywine River below.
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Rural Modern: American Art Beyond the City
Dale Nichols "Summer's Bounty" 1941
This was a special exhibit which explored the adaptation of modernist styles to subject
matter associated with the American countryside. Treatments of coastal New England,
small-town Pennsylvania, and other rural regions of the country illustrated the spread of
modernist styles such as Cubism and Fauvism. as well as the transformation of these
styles into an American vernacular modernism.
Nichols was from Nebraska and his paintings were widely reproduced on products
ranging from puzzles to plates. He was a close friend of Rockwell.
Paul Sample. "Tardy." 1935
Sample took a simple, rural theme of one room schoolhouse and child running to it,
but simplified all the forms and reduced them to geometric shapes and used large areas
of flat color, like the modernists in Paris. There no longer is the graduated shading of a
"realistic" style for grass or rocks or sand or distance, trying to imitate what the eye sees.
John Steuart Curry "The Old Folks" 1926
Curry was from Kansas and a leader of the Regionalist School, along with
Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. This was a portrait of his parents.
Thomas Hart Benton "The Tobaccco Sorters" 1942
Benton's historical and contemporary works were widely admired. He and several other
Regionalist artists were approached by the American Tobacco Company to create
promotional images which could be used for advertising for cigarettes. He spent
several weeks in Georgia and North Carolina making sketches to be as accurate as
possible, but his work was eventually rejected by the company.
Edward Firn "County Fair" 1935
This was one of several paintings Firn made after traveling through Kentucky.
The ladies ae judging jars of pickled vegetables at a local fair. the patterns of the
quilts on the wall recall Matisse and the cups reference Cezanne. The tight-lipped
lady in the center is meant to be viewed humorously.
Roger Medearis "The Farmer Takes a Wife" 1941
Medearis was a student of Thomas Hart Benton at the Kansas City Art Museum.
The title recalls the children's song, but with a comical twist.
Dale Nichols "Spring Turning" 1946
Nichols worked as a farmer for 20 years in Nebraska before setting off for Chicago
to study at the Art Institute and become an artist. He said he painted farms
because he knew them so well.
Anna Mary Robertson "Grandma Moses" "Collecting the Maple Sugar" 1938
Grandma Moses were popular partly because she represented an "authentic" American
view, rather than an elitist European style. Certainly my mother loved this painting because it reminded her of her childhood when everyone went into the woods to the collect the syrup,
then boil it in big tubs. The children were allowed to spill some of it on the snow where it
quickly hardened and became instant candy.
John Rogers Cox "Wheatfield" 1943
John Roger depicts the vast fields of wheat in the Midwest with only a speck of a house
on the horizon. He remembered the sound of the wind in the wheat as it whistled through
the heads of grain. It was almost like the ocean in its power, he thought.
Grant Woods "Appraisal" 1931
Grant Woods of Iowa used modernist techniques of sharp lines, patterns, flat
areas of color, and geometric forms to also comment on the relationship of city
and country. This is during the Depression. A city lady has come out to a farm to
buy a chicken for cooking. The farm wife considers her carefully before giving a price.
Roger Medearis "Godly Susan" 1941
A portrait of the young artist's grandmother, Susan, an upstanding member of the
local Baptist church, where the painter's father was preacher.
Horace Pippin "Floral Piece - Still Life"
Pippin was an African-American painter who went to Paris to study the latest styles
He returned to America and painted simple scenes of life in the Black communities
in rural settings.
Horace Pippin "Birmingham Meeting House"
The solid geometric forms and simple shapes are typical of a modernist style.
James Brooks "Oklahoma Barber Shop" 1931
Brooks later on became an artist of Abstract Expressionism, but in 1933 and 1934 he painted
a series of small works of life in Oklahoma and Texas, such as this simple shop, often
showing the decaying architecture of the Depression.
George Ault "Bright Lights at Russell's Corners" 1946
Ault lived with his family in London for several years and was influenced by Cubism
and Surrealism, both of which appear here in this deserted crossroads of a town.
Ralston Crawford "White Barn" 1936
Crawford helped develop the Precisionist Style based on geometric forms and
simplified forms, which he employs here is the rural environment of Exton, Pennsylvania,
not far from this museum.
Ralston Crawford "Steel Mill - Coatesville, PA" 1937
Crawford's paintings became increasingly flat and linear, more abstract. This mill
was located in the rolling hills of Chester County in Eastern Pennsylvania near Exton.
Dale Nichols. "When the Grass Grows Green." 1937
Although Nichols criticized modern, abstract art, he used many of the new
techniques in this painting of grain elevators in simple, solid geometric shapes and
large, flat areas of color.
Stuart Davis "New Mexico Landscape" 1943
Artist also discovered the Southwest and its vast spaces. Stuart usually painted
in the Cubist style, and here he flattens space and uses three strong planes to
divide his painting - foreground with houses, middle ground with desert, and
distance with mountains.
Marsden Hartley. "New Mexico Landscape." 1920
Hartley also discovered and fell in love with the Southwest at this time.
Here he shows the influence of Cezanne in the solid forms he creates for
the rocks and mountains and the compresses space.
Andrew Dasburg. "Placito Sanctuario." 1924.
Dasburg was fascinated by the simple, solid adobe buildings of the natives and
of the churches. He, Georgia O'Keefe, and Anselm Adams all worked with this theme.
Marsden Hartley. "Window - New Mexico."
Hartley here combines the modernist still life of the Cubists with the simplified
forms and compressed space of the modernists.
Charles Demuth "Buildings Abstraction - Lancaster" 1931
Demuth also worked in rural Pennsylvania and showed in his works how
modernist styles and rural subject matter worked together well.
Charles Demuth "End of the Parade"
DeScott Evans "Free Samples - Try Some"
Evans was an African-American artist who often used trompe l'oeil techniques
like this one, to trick the eye, but with everyday objects.
William Michael Harnett. "A Man's Table."
This still life is typical of "barroom art."
Alexandre Hogue. "The Crucified Land" 1939
Hogue used his paintings to show the agricultural problems of the Dust Bowl.
The painting shows aht poor farming does - all the furrows head down and all the soil
washed away, when a smart farmer would have used contour plowing to save the soil.
Ben Shahn. "Farmers." 1943
During the Depression, Lithuanian-born Ben Shahn was hired by
several New Deal programs which both helped artists and also documented
the lives of ordinary Americans during those difficult times.
Paul Sample. "Miners Resting." 1935.
The countryside is being ripped up by big industry and mining, although the men were
not benefitting. The painting is organized into three parts, like a medieval religious triptych,
by the posts of the porch. The men are simple, solid figu real and powerful as the hills
in the distance
Charles Sheeler. "Barn Reds."
Sheeler used simplified forms, crisp lines, and flat areas of color, all
modernist techniques, to show the barns of Pennsylvania.
Niles Spencer. "The Dormer Window." 1927
Spencer purposes distorts perspective and simplifies forms of this
view in Provincetown, MA, to accentuate the image of outdoors,
which he brings much closer.
Harold Weston. "The New Stove." 1926
Note the geometric forms, the flat areas of color, the strong outlines -
all modernist techniques for a simple interior.
Charles Sheeler. "Staircase - Doylestown."
Sheeler was both a photographer and Precisionist painter. The geometric forms,
the strong lines, the flat areas of color are all modernist techniques.
N. C. Wyeth. "Capt. Brown - Port Clyde, Maine" 1935
Although N.C. Wyeth, Andrew's father, was most noted for his
book illustrations, he also painted scenes of rural America such as
this fisherman in Maine, where the Wyeths spent the summer.
Andrew Wyeth. "Ridge Church." 1936
This was painted by a young Andrew Wyeth at his father's suggestion.
Andrew Wyeth. "A Cut in the Road." 1940
The scene can still be photographed not far from the museum, although the building
in the center has been demolished.
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