Customer Reviews

N.C. Wyeth: Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, 2 Volumes, Boxed

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I have long awaited the arrival of a good N.C. Wyeth book. When I saw this book was released I was elated...a bit taken back by the price though. Well I justified it seeing that it is a 2 book box set. When it arrived the first dissapointment was bad shipping. This set had inadequate protection and recieved a hole through the box from an shipping. Secondly, and most disappointing, was the fact that the images were often soooo small. Some that I've seen previously published much bigger are shown so small I felt compelled to get a magnifying glass. Because I'd seen them larger I knew it was a possiblity. I personally feel that the Brandywine museum should be ashamed of this publication. The Wyeth family should be outraged! As the first reviewer stated, the white space is huge. In some areas, 4-5 inches large, while the images are small! I have to say, since I so longed to see this publication, or at least the one I had hopped to see, my heart actually ached after the waiting and the cost of this item. My recommendation is to save your money till they lower the price even more and do what I plan to do, send a letter of complaint to the Brandywine Museum. After all the great publications on Andrew, this is what we get to represent N.C.? How disappointing!

It's great to see the length and breadth of N. C. Weyth's work, but this Raisonne despite its size (at 10 pounds a book) and quality printing, suffers from the artists own prodigious output. So exciting too see so much unseen work, but so disappointing to see so much of it so small. The exhaustive technical descriptions and layout choices to leave tons of white space around everything makes it time and again feel like a collection of stamps. A third volume was needed to do this the right way so the best of the art could be shown at the size it merits. More is less in this case.

That said this is a long overdue book that clearly shows the N.C. Weyth was unfairly overlooked in the art histories as a master who should have not been over shadowed by his talented, but rendering oriented son. N.C. was a painter; Andrew is a fastidious observer of detail. The combination of Weyth seniors style exploration, staying to long in illustration, his early death, the ugly discrimination of the art world, and his son's overriding pureness of personal vision prevented N. C. from being considered one of America's most important artists. I hope this book corrects that perfect storm of ignorance of his greatness. I urge the publishers to a expanded version that shows more the art at a good size, I'll buy it too.

I agree with the reviewers who have likened this collection to books of stamps. After traveling extensively around the country and seeing many original Wyeths on display, I was estatic to see that there would be a complete collection available. I figured for the price, it would be an extensive collection with complete large color prints. First off, the shipping sucks. When I got the package, the box was loose inside and the packing slip was torn, making it look like the it had been repackaged after the first box was damaged. The case was bent and worn, but the books were okay. The books are nicely bound, and do contain numerous paintings, but the amount of paintings that do not need a loop or magnifying glass to view are little, if any. If you need a great reference for the locations and information for the works of Wyeth, this is the collection. If you are looking for great images of the complete Wyeth collection, save your money. This collection is not worth it!

I do understand why other reviewers are miffed at the small reproductions. But in balance I felt there were an ample number of decent single page images. Yes there is heaps of whitespace but the worst excesses are around the chapters of text, it's not so bad in the image sections. The reproduction quality and colour balance is gloriously good, so the full pagers are a real treat and even the 1/9th page images are enjoyable. The best thing about the volumes is the quantity of images - there are literally thousands that have been tracked down and reproduced. If they were to give each the full glory treatment of a page apiece, then there would be several more volumes and a price tag many times higher. I would commend that Wyeth fans buy this set and, rather than moan to Brandywine about the average image size, lobby the publishers to produce some supplementary volumes that can expand on themes within his work - eg: Wyeth pirates, Wyeth cowboys, Wyeth civil war etc. It would be great if supplementary volumes could be done in a similar manner - slipcased, cloth bound hardcover and at this large folio size.

There is a way to deal with small pictures contained in N.C.Wyeth's Catalog Raisonne. Here's how:

Select those 'thumbnails' you like best and either computer scan or take them to the color copier.

You will be amazed by the quality of the blow ups to decent size!

20th Century Japanese Woodblock artist Hasui's 2 volume small reproduction Raisonne came as a shock when I saw it.

I promptly took the 'thumbnails' I liked to the copy shop and was able to tune and enlarge the image to produce a quality print as large as I wished.

I recalled seeing this done with a small and poor quality original, resulting in a copy that was dramatically better--and bigger!

The good news is that the quality of the Brandywine 'thumbnails' preserves the art when the image is enlarged--leaving me with the sense that this was the publisher/curatorial intent as small photo Raisonne are common.

What is most important is that Brandywine has finally published a complete Raisonne for this artist who has left so much that few have seen more than just a fraction of his prodigious output.