PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION
Lot 25W
Jamie Wyeth(born 1946)Declaration of Independence 40 x 30 1/4in
18 May 2016, 14:00 EDT
New YorkUS$250,000 - US$350,000
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Jamie Wyeth (born 1946)
Declaration of Independence
signed 'J. Wyeth' (lower left)
oil on canvas
40 x 30 1/4in
Painted in 2002.
signed 'J. Wyeth' (lower left)
oil on canvas
40 x 30 1/4in
Painted in 2002.
Footnotes
Provenance
The artist.
with Frank E. Fowler, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.
Private collection, North Carolina, acquired from the above.
Gift to the present owner, 2006.
This work has been recorded in the database of the artist's work being compiled by the Wyeth Center at the William A. Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine.
On June 11, 1776, Thomas Jefferson was tasked with the duty to draft the document that was to become known as the Declaration of Independence. Though he was the youngest member of the Continental Congress and not know for his oratory, he was chosen for, what in John Adams' words was, his "...peculiar felicity of expression." The young Jefferson set about the chore before him by sequestering himself in rooms at Market and Seventh Street in Philadelphia, a short walk down from the Pennsylvania State House later to be known as Independence Hall. Although part of a committee of five that included Adams and Benjamin Franklin, he spent the better part of three weeks independently revising and editing a number of drafts to the document. He is said to have each day risen before dawn and set himself down at his desk with tea and biscuits.
In the mid 1970s, in response to the Bicentennial year, Jamie Wyeth produced several portraits of Thomas Jefferson. Each consisted of head studies set against a plain background with the founding father in high collar, gazing nobly past the viewer. Although based on historical representations of the man, they embody the type of character studies not unlike those that both he and his father Andrew had executed of the local citizenry in Maine.
In the present work, however, we encounter an entirely different kind of depiction of Jefferson. Here, the youngest Wyeth appears to be deliberately channeling his grandfather N. C. Wyeth who tackled the same subject for a 1940 calendar illustration titled America in the Making. Nearly all of the compositional elements are included in the works of each artist, Jefferson is seated at his candlelit desk poring over drafts, a tall case clock looms in the background and dawn is breaking over a Philadelphia skyline in the paned window behind. Rather than the straightforward composition of his grandfather, Jamie has instead animated his canvas by placing the desk and room at an angle with the focus on the mass of crumpled drafts in the foreground. Lit by the glow of the candles they form a veritable bonfire before their author. The hood of the clock eerily emerges from the background almost disembodied from its trunk. Its glass face also reflects the candle's glow entirely obscuring the work's dial. The figure of Jefferson with his tussled hair, surrounded by his earlier efforts appears more in a quandary of second thoughts than contemplative.
Jefferson completed his draft of the Declaration on June 28th and it was submitted to the Congress who edited about a quarter of it. Famously signed on the 4th of July, the document was announced to the public on the 8th.
