"Принято считать, что в книжной иллюстрации Ньюэлл Конверс Уайет (анг. Newell Convers Wyeth; 1882-1945) был драматиком более сильным, чем его предшественники. Но на самом деле его гениальность заключалась в том, что он создавал свои картины гораздо менее драматичными, чем предыдущие художники. Его дар был в том, что он приостудил и отрезвил книжную иллюстрацию, и она приняла ту часть гравитации, которая в прошлом принадлежала только высокому искусству" ('Pictures Great,' His Publisher Told Him by Adam Gopnik. The New York Times, November 15, 1998. Перевод - мой).
The last of the Mohicans, a narrative of 1757
by James Fenimore Cooper
Illustrated by N. C. WYETH
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1919
The conventional thing to say about his book illustrations is that Wyeth made such pictures more dramatic than his predecessors had done. But in fact his genius lay in making his pictures much less dramatic than pictures like this had ever been before—his gift was for slowing down and sobering up book illustration so that it took on some of the gravity that had in the past belonged only to high art.
Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945) was one of the greatest illustrators and painters of the twentieth century. He studied under Howard Pyle between 1902 and 1904 and assimilated the teacher’s philosophy to capture natural aspects and meanings through "mental projection." The artist created 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books. The paintings created by the maestro are really mental: they live, sound, and are remembered; you definitely want to return to them. Dynamism and complexity of composition; excellent color and skillful distribution of light contrasting with deeply cast shadow; and something transcendental, radiating a vibrant emotionality that is immediately transmitted to the viewer, forcing him to intensely empathize with the characters in the story—this is the visual style of Newell Convers Wyeth. Wyeth himself called his philosophy of illustration a polysemantic term—"sight seen," which I would translate as the ability to look and convey what is seen to the viewer from the position of a single observer—the artist himself. That is, this is a form of presenting material in which the utmost accuracy of realities and carefully thought-out fantasies are not simply the artist's goal to convince the viewer of something but to present the event as a self-evident fact, which the viewer knew about and with which he has always agreed. Wyeth's gaze is the gaze of a child—from bottom to top, the enthusiastic gaze of a boy; it is the artist's memory of the experiences, dreams, and fantasies of childhood and youth; of the bright sun and of large trees casting long afternoon shadows; of a multi-colored, contrasting world full of movement, mysteries, and discoveries—these are our feelings awakened by the artist.
Иллюстрации даны по изданию, хранимому в фондах Университетских калифорнийских библиотек (University of California Libraries), находящееся в оцифрованном виде на сайте "Архив Интернета" (archive.org)