“Dear Papa,” N.C. Wyeth wrote in 1909. “All that I have done in the past, and all that I could do in the future (in illustration) would be utterly forgotten in a preciously few years except by a few friends and relatives perhaps. It is my purpose to create pictures that will last, like the works of men like Michelangelo, Raphael, Millet, and scores of others….Therefore, I am going to drop illustration.”
Wyeth wanted to get far enough ahead financially to devote himself exclusively to easel painting.
Two years after he wrote the letter he created the unforgettable paintings of Treasure Island. Kidnapped, Robinson Crusoe, and Robin Hood all lay before him.
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The Wyeths: The Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, edited by Betsy Wyeth, 1971, page 292.