8 Scribners Illustrated Hardback Books by NC Wyeth Chambers 1919-1925 9.5"

Description

Set of eight antique hardcover books published between 1911 and 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons and illustrated by N.C. Wyeth. Set includes: ""Treasure Island"" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1911); ""The Mysterious Island"" by Jules Verne (1919); ""The Boy's King Arthur,"" edited by Sidney Lanier (1924); ""David Balfour"" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1924); ""The Last of the Mohicans"" by James Fenimore Cooper (1924); ""The Deerslayer"" by James Fennimore Cooper (1925); ""Kidnapped"" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1925); and also ""Quentin Durward,"" by Sir Walter Scott, illustrated by C. Bosseron Chambers (1923). “Born in Needham, Massachusetts, N C Wyeth became one of the foremost book illustrators and mural painters in America in the early part of the 20th century. He did illustrations for most of the major magazines and book publishers in the United States.

He grew up on a farm near Walden Pond, Massachusetts with parents who encouraged his art talent that was inherited by his descendants including son and daughter, Andrew Wyeth and Henrietta Hurd, and grandson, Jamie.

He studied art in high school and in Boston, and in 1902 entered the Howard Pyle School of Art in Wilmington, Delaware. He went often with Pyle's classes to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Pyle taught his students to paint with great description and vitality as though it were life itself, and Wyeth, a subscriber to this view, was later credited with being even more skilled than Pyle.

His first sale of a painting was a wild bucking bronco, which became the Saturday Evening Post cover of February 21, 1903. The painting resulted from sketches Wyeth had made in the Southwest with his parents in his youth and from seeing the work of Frederic Remington in many weekly newspapers.

As a magazine illustrator for Scribners, he traveled in the West including Arizona in 1904, and in 1906, he returned to the West on assignment for Outing magazine. From these trips, he produced over four-hundred illustrations and paintings. During the visits, he drove a stage coach, climbed many mountains, and visited Indian tribes. When he returned to Delaware, he had numerous sketches and also artifacts he collected, which he subsequently used in his paintings.

After his illustrations for ""A Day with the Roundup,"" a story that appeared in Scribners, he had more requests for western illustration work than he could fill. And for the remainder of his life, this subject was one he frequently painted.

He also illustrated children's books including Treasure Island. With money earned from that project, he bought eighteen acres of land at Chadd's Ford west of Philadelphia, which served as his studio and his family home for nine decades and, after the death of his wife in 1973, became the site of Brandywine River Museum. In the 1920s, he became increasingly committed to easel painting, and he tried very hard to stay away from too many outside commitments so he was free to paint at Chadd's Ford or the Maine seacoast where he and his family vacationed. Later he told students that to be a good illustrator, one had to become an artist first.

Feeling a need to paint on larger surfaces, in the 1930s he began painting large-scale murals, and earned many commissions for public and private businesses. Many of his mural themes were based on American history.

In 1941, he was elected to the National Academy of Design in New York and was also a member of the Salmagundi Club, the Society of Illustrators, and the American Federation of the Arts. His work is in the collections of The Brandywine River Museum and the Delaware Art Center in Wilmington.

At the peak of a brilliant career, he was killed with a grandson in a train/car accident near Chadd's Ford in 1945.” “C. Bosseron Chambers was known for figurative works in an illustrative manner, with many of them being either portraits or works with religious themes.

An illustrator and teacher as well as painter, Chambers was born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 1882. His father, a young Irish captain in the British Army, was a convert to the Catholic Church, and his mother was the daughter of a French family long established in St. Louis.

Charles, the youngest of several children, was sent to the Preparatory and Grammar Schools connected with St. Louis University in his earliest years, and his education in his chosen art was begun under Louis Schultz of the Berlin Royal Academy, with whom he spent six years. His next master was Aleis Hrdliczka of the Royal Academy of Vienna, and he later studied with Johannes Schumacher of Dresden for six years.

After matriculating at St. Louis University, Chambers began his professional career at Palm Beach, Florida, a place chosen because of his mother's failing health.

From this period in his artistic productions date the fantastic figure compositions exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition, together with portraits of Colonel Mitchell for the Missouri Historical Society; Joseph Jefferson, the great American actor; young Master Haven; Henry Phipps; Henry M. Flagler; Mrs. Voorhis and others.

In 1916, he moved to New York City, and established himself in the Carnegie Studios, Carnegie Hall, where he occupied a splendid atelier. Here he produced the Light of the World, the most popular religious painting of the early 1900s in the USA.

He was a member of the Society of Illustrators, established in 1901 in New York City, and the Salmagundi Club, an early important art club in New York City. He illustrated Sir Walter Scott's, Quentin Durward, in the Scribner Classics for Young People.

His work was exhibited at the well-known John Levy Galleries in New York City in the 1930s, and his work is now in several public collections in St. Louis and Chicago, including Chicago's St. Ignatius's Church, Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, and the Osceola Club in St. Augustine, Florida.

Chambers is listed on p. 145 of Currier's Price Guide to American Artists at Auction, 6th ed. 1994, written & compiled by William T. Currier, Currier Publication, Stoneham, MA.”

Condition

Good Overall - Gentle wear/some dings to covers; some discoloration to page edges

Dimensions

7.25” x 1.5” x 9.5” (Width x Depth x Height)