From his adolescence an unusual degree of attention has been focused on James Wyeth as a third generation artist: the son of Andrew Wyeth, perhaps America’s most popular painter, and the grandson of Newell Convers Wyeth, who delighted children with his illustrations for the classic novels by Stevenson, Cooper, and Scott. The technical facility Wyeth showed in his early works helps explain why he had his first one-man show in New York when he was only twenty and a retrospective in Omaha, Nebraska before he turned thirty.
Toward the end of the 1960’s Wyeth took part in Eyewitness in Space, jointly sponsored by NASA and the National Gallery of Art. Since 1969 Wyeth has served as a member of the advisory committee of the United States Postal Service.
Mr. Wyeth’s more recent exhibitions have included those at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1980), Greenville Museum of Art, SC (1981), Amon Carter Museum (1981), Anchorage Fine Arts Museum (1983), State Museum Alaska (1983), Portland Museum of Art (1984), Columbia Museum of Art (1984), Oklahoma Arts Center (1985), Farnsworth Art Museum (1993), Brandywine River Museum (1994), and Decatur House, Washington, DC (1995).
James Wyeth is a member of the National Academy of Design and the American Watercolor Society. He joined the NSS Board of Governors in 1975.