[Autographs & Manuscripts] Wyeth, N(ewell).C(onvers).
Autograph Letter, signed
Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, March 4, 1909. 5 pages on four large 4to sheets. To his former art teacher Frederic L. "Eric" Pape, reflecting on their recent meeting in New York and seeking Pepe’s advice regarding an offer to teach painting and illustration at Columbia University: “My Dear Mr. Pape, Let me say right at the beginning that the afternoon spent in New York with you was, above all stimulating. When I left you I had courage, I had belief in myself. Your words of advice were a revelation and rang with truth, they presented an entirely new and invigorating outlook after the deadening, pessimistic views taken by certain painters with whom I have talked many times. After seeing you and thinking it over hard, I felt that my confidence, my enthusiasm had been blighted by a rapid-fire onslaught made by men who have achieved a little and who looked upon illustration with a certain contempt. In short, they made me contemptuous of my work. Consequently I became more or less demoralized. I do not refer to your praise for which I of course felt honored, but to your healthy, invigorating advice to paint, and to work and paint, paint, paint-to study alone, to work with confidence, to paint things with all the sincerity and truth that I possess. Also I have belief in your idea that teaching is helpful, that the exactions demanded by pupils would strengthen one’s knowledge of construction...” Light creasing along old folds, paper clip residue and small paper faults at blank upper margins of the first and last sheet.The American painter, engraver, sculptor and illustrator Frederick L. "Eric" Pape (1870-1938), in his capacity as the founder of the Eric Pape School of Art in Boston, served in the year 1900 as N.C. Wyeth’s first formal teacher in the art of illustration. The letter above finds the 26-year-old Wyeth, in 1909, already an established and respected illustrator, turning to his mentor for that moral and professional support that enabled him [Wyeth] to assume within the next two years, with his illustrations for the Scribner’s Illustrated Classics 1911 publication of "Treasure Island", his full stature as America’s leading illustrator.