Betsy Wyeth, wife of famed Chadds Ford artist Andrew Wyeth, was responsible for much of Andrew Wyeth’s legacy, writes Julia Shipley for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

An exhibit at the Brandywine River Museum, “Home Places,” features drawings and paintings of many Chadds Ford houses Andrew Wyeth painted that exist within two square miles of the museum.

It’s the first Wyeth exhibit since Betsy Wyeth’s death in 2020.

Ten works in the Brandywine show — a fifth of the exhibition — show the Brinton Mill property, which the couple bought, refurbished, and moved into full-time in 1963.  

In 1979, Betsy Wyeth documented Andrew’s paintings.

The same year, she published a children’s novel, The Stray, that includes a fictional map resembling Chadds Ford.

Betsy Wyeth wrote the text for Christina’s World: Paintings and Pre-studies of Andrew Wyeth (1982), co-produced the 1995 Wyeth family documentary “Snow Hill” and worked with an IBM executive in 1987 on one of the first digital art archives.

She selected and edited 1,200 letters from her late father-in-law before publishing Wyeths: The Letters of N.C. Wyeth 1901-1945.

She was also the “energy behind” the Brandywine Museum of Art.

Read more about the influence of Betsy Wyeth in her husband’s legacy in The Philadelphia Inquirer.