Top 5 Quotes & Sayings by N. C. Wyeth

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American artist N. C. Wyeth.
Last updated on April 18, 2025.
N. C. Wyeth

Newell Convers Wyeth, known as N. C. Wyeth, was an American artist and illustrator. He was the pupil of artist Howard Pyle and became one of America's greatest illustrators. During his lifetime, Wyeth created more than 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books — 25 of them for Scribner's, the Scribner Classics, which is the body of work for which he is best known. The first of these, Treasure Island, was one of his masterpieces and the proceeds paid for his studio. Wyeth was a realist painter at a time when the camera and photography began to compete with his craft. Sometimes seen as melodramatic, his illustrations were designed to be understood quickly. Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, and said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other."

Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other.
The sheep-like tendency of human society soon makes inroads on a child's unsophistications, and then popular education completes the dastardly work with its systematic formulas, and away goes the individual, hurtling through space into that hateful oblivion of mediocrity. We are pruned into stumps, one resembling another, without character or grace.
Treasure Island is completed! The entire set of seventeen canvases without one break in my enthusiasm and spirit. Better in every quality than anything I ever did. — © N. C. Wyeth
Treasure Island is completed! The entire set of seventeen canvases without one break in my enthusiasm and spirit. Better in every quality than anything I ever did.
I hope the time will never come when I shall feel satisfied. To reach the goal of one's ambitions must be tragic.
If you paint a man leaning over your own back must ache
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