This week, Somerville Manning Gallery in Delaware will participate in an area-wide tribute to one of America's greatest illustrators, N.C. Wyeth, from June 14 to Aug. 24.

The Brandywine River Museum of Art will open “N.C. Wyeth New Perspectives” on June 22, which will then travel to the Portland Museum of Art. This exhibition is the first N.C. Wyeth retrospective at Brandywine since the '70s and will examine in depth the entirety of Wyeth's oeuvre, repositioning him within the greater context of early 20th century American visual culture.

Somerville Manning Gallery will host a corresponding solo exhibition celebrating Wyeth's work. Sixteen paintings on view will come from private collections, and have never before been seen publicly. Thirteen other works are for sale, including paintings of Wyeth’s Chadds Ford home and its surroundings, still lifes, and illustrations for magazines and books. While incorporating the best of Wyeth's illustrations, this exhibition will also feature aspects of his art that until now have garnered less attention, such as his landscapes and still lifes.

The gallery is supporting the education series on N.C. Wyeth at the Brandywine River Museum of Art this summer. Lectures begin June 27 and continue with guest curators and professors until Sept. 12. Contact the museum for tickets.

Generations of readers grew up with stories illustrated by N. C. Wyeth, and his name was as renowned as the authors whose stories he pictured. Recently the art world and the art market have been taking a fresh look at Wyeth's art and achievements.

Somerville Manning Gallery specializes in N.C. Wyeth paintings, as well as paintings from the Wyeth family, Howard Pyle School of Illustration, and contemporary painting and sculpture. The curator of N.C. Wyeth Collections and Historic Properties at the Brandywine River Museum of Art, Christine B. Podmaniczky, worked closely with the gallery's owner, Vickie Manning, over 19 years while she researched and compiled the N.C. Wyeth Catalog Raisonne.

Vickie Manning also co-authored Visions of Adventure, a book about adventure painting in American illustration.

Somerville Manning Gallery has a long history with the Wyeth family beginning in the 1980s when it handled sales from the N.C. Wyeth estate, until 1994, at which time the estate passed to the Brandywine River Museum of Art.

This association has continued through the years with the exhibitions “N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth Six Decades,” “Wyeth Women: Henriette Wyeth Hurd, Carolyn Wyeth, and Ann Wyeth McCoy,” paintings by the three daughters of N.C. Wyeth as well as major painting exhibitions for both and Jamie Wyeth in 2015 and Andrew Wyeth in 2017.

The opening reception will be held at the Somerville Manning Gallery (101 Stone Block Row, Greenville, Del.) on June 14 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. There will be a gallery talk with Vickie Manning at 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 302-652-0271 or visit www.somervillemanning.com.