Flow gently, sweet Brandywine

Few places are as suffused in the past as the Brandywine Valley of southeast Chester and Delaware counties and northern Delaware.  It's not only due to the great Revolutionary battlefield, or the magnificent estates -- now publicly accessible -- built by several generations of DuPonts.  The pastoral quality of the landscape alone can transport a visitor back into a simpler and more tranquil time.

Brandywine Creek

The heart of this storybook area is in Chadds Ford at the Brandywine Museum, where, in a restored and converted gristmill on the bank of the Brandywine Creek, is housed a delightful and stimulating collection devoted to the many artists who have lived and been inspired by the Brandywine's beauty -- first and foremost among them, three generations of Wyeths. 

The museum

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) is of course renowned as one of the last century's great realists.  His galleries are rich in pieces that evoke the routines and customs of rural life.  Their simplicity is counterpointed by an understated tension expressed in the faces and bodies of his subjects (most of them neighbors and intimates) of yearning, sorrow and joy. The effect is a matter-of-fact honesty that has captivated viewers and often befuddled fellow artists and critics.  Snow Hill, Andrew's meditation on death (his own) is a masterwork -- at once sardonic and mysterious.

Andrew Wyeth's enigmatic 'Snow Hill'

George Weymouth's 'The Way Back'

The art of Andrew's son James (born 1946), more pictorial and less melancholy than the father's, but equally absorbed with the the region's life and land, is abundantly on view, as are works of many painters of an earlier time who were equally taken with this countryside.  "The Way Back," a self-portrait by George Weymouth (born 1936) showing only his hands on the reins of a horse-drawn carriage as it approaches his Chadd's Ford river house, is a conscious homage to that tradition.

However, for some visitors, particularly those with a leaning toward fantasy and adventure, the highlight is the NC Wyeth gallery.  Andrew's father and James's grandfather, Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945) was one of the great book illustrators of his time, bringing to life in the mind's eye of young readers knights and buccaneers, explorers and fortune-hunters of all sorts.

'Treasure Island' cover

Entrance to the gallery is marked by the stealthy approach of a gang of pirates set on ambush, rendered against a lurid, solid yellow sky.  The painting was commissioned for the cover of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and on the walls within are found vivid scenes of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, a brooding Roger Bacon, the medieval philosopher, and the Salem witches.  A favorite is the American traitor Benedict Arnold with his beautiful wife Peggy Shippen at his side, miserably exiled to London in a losing cause, the object of passerbys' curiosity and more than a little contempt.  For any youngster with a taste for action and adventure, this art is a visual and imaginary feast.

Peggy Shippen, wishing she were back home in Pennsylvania

Get up and go:

The Brandywine Museum is located on Route 1 northbound in Chadd's Ford.  From Lancaster, take Route 896 south out of Strasburg and enjoy one of Pennsylvania's finest scenic byways.  Try The Bullfrog Inn in Georgetown for lunch, or take a quick detour at Lincoln University and load up on some fresh mushrooms at Sher-Rockee Mushroom Farms.  The museum is one of many attractions in the Brandywine Valley, so it's easy to make a day of it.