After 62 years in the Brandywine Baptist Church, N.C. Wyeth’s ‘In Naaman’s House’ is going under the hammer at Freeman’s|Hindman

“Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honorable; so we are told, ‘But he was a leper.’

On that little word but, ten thousand sermons have been preached.”

This is the beginning of Bruce Barton’s story “The Little Maid in the Captain’s House” from Good Housekeeping’s “Children of the Bible” series, published in 1929.

Some may know how the rest of the story goes: Naaman’s unnamed wife’s unnamed young maid, captured from Israel by the Syrians, implored that Naaman seek healing from the prophet Elisha. He did and eventually healed.

Lesser known, perhaps, is the fact that the Good Housekeeping story was illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, the Massachusetts-born painter and illustrator who traveled to the Brandywine Valley in 1902 to study under “the Father of American Illustration,” Howard Pyle.

Wyeth, father and grandfather to artists Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, respectively, then settled in Chadds Ford.

He was killed in a car crash, along with a grandson, in 1945.

In 1963, the original painting for Wyeth’s illustration, In Naaman’s House, was gifted to the Brandywine Baptist Church by his widow, Carolyn Bockius Wyeth.

“I felt [it’s] what N.C. Wyeth would have wanted,” she said of the gift.

Decades on, the painting is being deaccessioned and auctioned on Sunday by the auction house Freeman’s|Hindman.

It shows the young maid speaking to a reclining Naaman whose wife is shown listening to the maid with her face turned toward the young girl. In a dramatic play of light and shadow, we see Naaman’s face in an almost frown, his bejeweled tiara and green robe, a multicolored waistband, and his bright red cape shimmering in the sunlight streaming in through the window behind him.

Outside, we see a blue cloudy sky with a distant pair of palm trees. Inside, the green and red tiles of Naaman’s room glisten in the sun.

The painting’s dramatic play of light and the depiction of the tense conversation is something that Wyeth would have learned from Pyle, whose style was to always emphasize the dramatic moments in a scene, said Adam Veil, Freeman’s|Hindman’s head of department, American art and Pennsylvania Impressionists.

The painting, he said, “was intended to be educational in nature. [Wyeth’s] illustrations not only accompanied the stories, but illuminated pivotal or important moments within them.” And because they were meant for a broad readership, they had to be “easily readable and easy to understand.”

“The qualities [shown in the painting] of being charitable, of helping others and using children as intercessors between humans and gods,” made it an apt gift for a church, said Raphaël Chatroux, Freeman’s|Hindman’s head of department, Modern and Impressionist art. “It was really their pride. A jewel for many years.”

The Brandywine Baptist Church, founded in 1692, was the only church in Chadds Ford back in 1964. And for 62 years, it served as a fitting home for a painting that was meant to live beyond the confines of galleries and museums.

“It’s a church that’s Pennsylvania’s second-oldest congregation. And it’s a painting by arguably one of the most important American illustrators. So there’s a whole lot of superlatives here. Oldest, best, and so on. But well-deserved in many ways,” said Veil.

Ahead of next year’s Semiquincentennial, proceeds from the sale of the painting will aid the church’s renovation efforts and the restoration of the adjoining historical cemetery that lies at the edge of the site of 1777’s Battle of Brandywine.

» READ MORE: Betsy Wyeth: The woman who ‘created the worlds’ captured on canvas by her husband.

“It’s not always that you find paintings by Wyeth being in such public places, and especially churches,” said Chatroux. “From our perspective as specialists, we see a painting that was pretty much left untouched for all these years. Illustrations [usually have] a lot of hands go around the painting. Here it’s really from the family to the church, which means that we received the painting in a pristine condition.”

Still in its original canvas, visible in the back of the painting is a dedication note in Carolyn Wyeth’s handwriting.

“In Naaman’s House. Presented to Brandywine Baptist Church. By Mrs. N.C. Wyeth. November 1963.”

“Those inscriptions tend to just be erased, and eventually they just vanish,” said Chatroux. “So it’s almost like a time capsule of a 1920 painting that was preserved in that incredible state of conservation, quite miraculously.”

He called the early 1920s the “golden age of American illustration art.”

“Those paintings,” he said, “tend to fetch a higher price. And of course, the more dramatic they are, the better they perform.”

While the auction house estimates the highest bid to be between $250,000 and $400,000, neither Veil nor Chatroux are ready to predict the highest bid.

“If I weren’t a superstitious person, I would talk all day about that sort of thing. We have high expectations for it, just because of what it is and who it’s by,” said Veil.

In 2023, Wyeth’s 1936 Jetty Tree fetched an astronomical $2,450,000 when the sale was estimated between $200,000-300,000.

For collectors who are preparing their collections for the nation’s 250th anniversary, Chatroux said of In Naaman’s House, “there’s a piece of America right there on that canvas.”