Nationality American Occupation Poet, painter Alma mater Princeton University | Education Lawrenceville School Died 11 May 1981 | |
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Born October 24, 1894 New York City, U.S. Resting place Blawenburg Reformed Church Cemetery, Blawenburg, New Jersey, U.S. Relatives J. Marion Sims (maternal grandfather)
Marion Sims Wyeth (brother) Books This Man's Army: A War in Fifty-odd Sonnets [by] John Allan Wyeth Parents John Allan Wyeth, Florence Nightingale Sims Grandparents Louis Wyeth, Euphemia Allan | ||
John Allan Wyeth (October 24, 1894 – May 11, 1981) was an American poet and painter.
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Early life
John Allan Wyeth was born on October 24, 1894 in New York City. His father, also named John Allan Wyeth, was a Confederate veteran and New York City surgeon. His mother, Florence Nightingale Sims, was the daughter of surgeon J. Marion Sims. He had a brother, Marion Sims Wyeth, who designed many mansions in Florida.
Wyeth was educated at the Lawrenceville School, a boarding school in New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton University in 1915. He was a member of the Princeton Charter Club. He taught French in a high school in Mesa, Arizona for a year, until he pursued graduate school at Princeton to become a professor of Romance languages. However, in the wake of World War I, his plan was disrupted and he joined the American Expeditionary Forces as a French translator in 1917. Several decades later, during World War II, he served in the United States Coast Guard.
Career
Wyeth wrote poetry from an early age. After World War I, he became known as a war poet. His collection of poems, This Man’s Army: A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets, was published in 1928. It was reviewed in Poetry in December 1932.
"This Man's Army," with a biographical and interpretive introduction by Dana Gioia (which first appeared in the 2008 Summer issue of the Hudson Review), and annotations by BJ Omanson, was re-published in October 2008 by the University of South Carolina Press, as part of Matthew Bruccoli's Great War Series of lost literary classics of World War I.
Wyeth began his painting career under the tutelage of English painter Duncan Grant in 1932. He worked at the Academie Moderne in Paris for six years under Jean Marchand, during which time he also studied graphics with Louis Marcoussis. By 1939, his paintings were exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Frank Rehn Gallery in New York City. He painted Post-Impressionist landscapes.
Works
On To Paris
Personal life
Wyeth lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Toward the end of his life he lived with his niece, poet Jane Marion McLean in Princeton, New Jersey.
Death
Wyeth died on May 11, 1981. He was buried at the Blawenburg Reformed Church Cemetery in Blawenburg, New Jersey.