Wyeth Day Lecture: Henry David Thoreau and the Wyeth Family of Artists

Born 100 years apart, Andrew Wyeth and Henry David Thoreau shared a birthday. With this in mind, on Wyeth’s 100^th and Thoreau’s 200^th birthday, curator Elliot Bostwick Davis will discuss Thoreau’s literature in relation to all three generations of Wyeth artists. Beginning with N.C. Wyeth’s illustrations for Men of Concord, we will also explore Andrew, Carolyn, and Jamie Wyeth’s intersections with Thoreau’s perspectives on nature and art.

Elliot Bostwick Davis is the John Moors Cabot Chair of the Art of the Americas Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she oversees one of the world’s pre-eminent assemblages of American paintings, decorative arts, and sculpture. Davis led the installation of the MFA’s new wing for the Art of the Americas, which offers a broader definition of “American” art by including more than 5,000 works from North, Central, and South America, including ancient American art of the first millennium AD.