Edward Higgins, March 2014

Edward Higgins is a member of The Association Internationale Des Critiques d’Art.

    Just to mention “calendar art” in any polite society is to begin to say something nasty. Only those whose taste in art runs to “I know what I like” tend to be satisfied with a dreamy English cottage in winter…and we’re not even talking Thomas Kinkade.

    Now, however, the Brandywine River Art Museum has mounted two exhibitions of calendar art and the entire genre needs to be re-examined. A Date with Art: The Business of Illustrated Calendars and N.C. Wyeth’s Making of America are both curated by Christine Podmaniczky and both run through May 18. A Date with Art features the art of Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, and N.C. Wyeth and examples of the calendars that commissioned them. The artists are considered the best “illustrators” of their time.

    Each of them realized that the calendars would have far greater distribution than their art could ever hope for. The calendars were produced in the hundreds of thousands and for many families represented the only art hanging in the parlor. If name recognition was advantageous to the artist, this was the place to get it.

    Of them, only Pyle was vexed by the dangers to his art by the advertising world. Parish signed long-term deals that allowed him time for his “real” art. Rockwell, whose art was always one foot into advertising, went along for the Boy Scouts, and Wyeth continued to do his own thing which were large-scale paintings of history sometimes as illustrations and sometimes not.

    Parrish’s work features General Electric’s Edison Mazda brand, the light bulb, in a kind of mystic, sensual rendition that characterized his other art. Rockwell is identified by Boy Scout pictures, and Pyle’s entry is “Nation Makers” which he did for Collier’s magazine. Wyeth managed to find commissions that allowed him to proceed with artistic goals.

    The second show, Making of America, is concerned with the 1940 calendar Wyeth illustrated with a dozen paintings from America’s past. He has Coronado, a Spanish conquistador, Sam Houston, Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, Marquette, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Lewis and Clark, and Abraham Lincoln.

    The Washington portrait is particularly strong with brilliant color and contrast and the subject definitely looks like a general. That might be due to the scene which shows Washington at Yorktown when rebel victory was close at hand. The Marquette painting shows the explorer standing in a canoe suspended on a clear lake mystically and majestically. There is no information on how the subjects were chosen or who even chose them—the client or the artist. Still, the subjects do fit in with Wyeth’s interests.

    A telling display with this show is a group of props from the Wyeth studio which indicates his determination to get things right, especially in terms of costume and dress. Items include a Kentucky rifle, a coonskin cap, and a life mask of Lincoln.

    As was usual with Wyeth, the illustrations are large scale. “Covered Wagons” shows his experience in the West. Almost three-quarters is skyscape with the wagons viewed from high above. Each of the paintings carries with it an appreciation by scholars, experts in art and history.

    Many of a certain age remember illustrated calendars only from those in the service bays at gas stations. They were of interest to males as most of them features bathing beauties in two-piece suits. They are such a far cry from today’s pin-ups that it seems like a distant era, simpler and gentler. However, the nostalgic pull of those calendars, as with these displayed by the Brandywine River Art Museum, are pleasing to an aesthetic sense as well as telling us what day it is.

Brandywine River Art Museum, 1 Hoffman's Mill Rd, Chadds Ford, PA (610) 388-2700 brandywinemuseum.org

When Calendars Told Stories

Painting: N. C. Wyeth, “The Alchemist,” 1937. Oil on canvas on hardboard, 75 3/4 x 50 5/8 inches. Courtesy of Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections. Photograph by Will Brown for 1938 Hercules, Inc. calendar

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