The Myth Of Wyeth -- A Fascinating New Biography Sheds Light On A Famous Family's Secret Struggles With Art - And Angst

"N. C. Wyeth: A Biography" By David Michaelis Knopf, $40

A Swiss doctor coined the word "nostalgia" to describe the ailment of people like the grandmother of N. C. Wyeth, the famous artist, illustrator and patriarch of the artistic Wyeth clan. In 1856 at age 25, Henriette Zirngiebel left Bern, Switzerland, to join her husband in Massachusetts, and ever after suffered from a deep longing for her old home. Her depression infiltrated the psyche of her daughter, Hattie, who spent her life bemoaning the loss of a Swiss village she'd never seen.

Hattie's husband (and Wyeth's father), Newell Wyeth, worked seven days a week at his hay and grain business to escape his wife's perpetual discontent, leaving his four sons, especially the eldest, Newell Convers Wyeth, to soothe and absorb their mother's emotional angst.

N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945) grew up to become one of America's most famous book illustrators, with more than 100 volumes to his credit, including such favorites as Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island," Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' "The Yearling" and James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." Wyeth's son, Andrew, became an even more successful painter than his father - and now is succeeded by his own son, Jamie.

This dynasty of popular American artists is still shadowed by the ghost of Hattie Wyeth's depression and secrecy, as we learn in the fascinating biography, "N. C. Wyeth: A Biography" by David Michaelis. Michaelis discovered that Hattie's obsessive behavior was rooted in more than misplaced homesickness. Her psychological problems deeply affected the lives of her sons - one of whom committed suicide - and their children in turn. Michaelis says that "there's no question that N. C. Wyeth's mother created an emotional monopoly on his life."

Wyeth and Hattie exchanged thousands of letters, sometimes several a week, over the course of 23 years. That correspondence provided a basic chronology for Michaelis' book.

It also hid a lot. The Wyeths, as Michaelis learned, are good at keeping secrets and embellishing the facts. "N. C. Wyeth had been so mythologized by his family that if I'd gone in and just sat at their feet, so to speak, and begun taking down every word, I would have done nothing but recapitulate a lot of

mythology," Michaelis said in a phone interview from his home in Washington, D.C. `"here's 10 versions for everything."

At first, the Wyeths ignored his letters, so Michaelis simply authorized himself to write the biography. He began doing research and came upon a cache of letters that were previously undocumented.

"Wyeth was the kind of person who could not write a letter, even to a business colleague, without telling something vital about the way he was feeling," Michaelis said.

Eventually, through the course of interviewing family friends and essentially "carpet bombing" Jamie Wyeth with appeals, Michaelis succeeded in gaining the family's trust. He met with Jamie, who introduced him to his mother, Betsy Wyeth, the keeper of the family archive in Chadds Ford, Penn., at the home N. C. Wyeth built for his family in 1911. There, Michaelis was allowed to go through all the family documents, but only on condition that nothing be photocopied or removed from the premises.

He spent days at a stretch engrossed in what he found, and a captivating story emerged. From the many sources of his material, Michaelis wove a narrative that is frank yet sensitively told in clear, unaffected prose.

More than just an artist's biography, "N. C. Wyeth" reads as a great, typically American, tragedy. Torn between his father's Yankee work ethic and his mother's unbounded narcissism and sentimentality, Wyeth was trapped in internal conflict. His idealized image of his parents and his absorption of Hattie's amorphous dissatisfaction left Wyeth feeling always inadequate, overly responsible to everyone in his extended family. Guilt-ridden if he wasn't earning money for illustrations, Wyeth nevertheless longed to be a "pure" painter, unfettered from commercialism. Proud of Andrew's accomplishments, he was still torn later in life over his success.

Despite (or because of) such conflicts, Wyeth was a painter and illustrator of great power and sensitivity. Michaelis shows how Wyeth gleaned the emotions from a text to create his illustrations.

While reading the text of "Treasure Island," Michaelis writes that Wyeth "hunted for incidents in which he could develop emotions that the author had only hinted at. Stevenson depicts no scene in which Jim Hawkins leaves home. Jim merely reports saying `goodbye to mother and the cove where I had lived since I was born . . .'

"Wyeth depicted Jim Hawkins and his mother at the crucial, wrenching moment. In (the illustration) `Jim Hawkins Leaves Home,' the sudden break between mother and son commands our whole attention. Wyeth painted a scene full of unexpressed longings. Both figures hold back, and the tension between the two is palpable."

As a biographer, Michaelis integrates both Wyeth's personal struggles with his development and frustrations as a painter, but falls short in his discussions of Wyeth's art. Michaelis' attempts at formal or theoretical evaluations lack conviction and sometimes have the hollow sound of jargon.

These are minor points in an otherwise outstanding book, a biography told with skill and deep understanding. Michaelis said he was surprised, as he worked, at his own involvement with the story.

"I was startled when I started reading the letters what a sense of emotional identification I had with this person. His complexes were recognizable to me, his struggles."

That's what makes this book so moving. Michaelis found patterns and conflicts in Wyeth's life and family relations that will be familiar to many people, not just artists. He constructed the biography as a heroic tale, steeped in fate, which requires no embellishment to attain the resonance of myth.