Illustration vs. "Art"

As I mentioned yesterday, this morning Jill and I visited the Brandywine River Museum, dedicated to the works of the Wyeth family and related artists. It has one of the finest collections of book and magazine illustration from the "Golden Age" (circa 1880 to 1920), including, of course, the work of the family patriarch, N.C. Wyeth.

Despite a very successful career, Wyeth struggled with being recognized within the larger art community, in which he was derided as "merely an illustrator," as were his friends and contemporaries Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell--as well as all those who turned out dozens of drawings, paintings to illustrate stories, articles, books, and magazine covers. To be honest, it's a distinction I've never understood.

First of all, if the objection is that the illustrators worked on commission, producing not what they wished but what their clients wished, then so did hundreds of "classical" painters. Perhaps the most famous painting of all time, the Mona Lisa, was done on commission for the subject's husband. If the objection is that, rather than painting from their own imaginations or from nature, the illustrators are interpreting the words of storyteller, how does that differ from da Vinci interpreting the words of the Gospels to delineate the Last Supper, or Botticelli interpreting the Roman myths to paint the birth of Venus?

At any rate, if you have any interest in great illustration, I urge you to visit this museum. Here's a link to its website: https://www.brandywine.org/museum

And, if you are unfamiliar with Wyeth's work, here's one of his paintings for the Charles Scribner edition of Treasure Island: