CHADDS FORD, PA.- Visitors to the Brandywine River Museum can learn how N.C. Wyeth altered his paintings—and how the alterations were detected—in a fascinating exhibition entitled Over and Under: Reworked and Reused Paintings by N.C. Wyeth.

Through a combination of paintings, photo enlargements, archival material, and text panels, the exhibition explores changes made by the artist and by other hands to works of art. Several canvases included in the exhibition bear little or no resemblance to the original images conceived by the artist.

The changes were discovered during ongoing research for the museum's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of N.C. Wyeth's work. Confirmation of the alterations relies on methods that employ the gamut between intuition and highly advanced technical equipment.

Prominently included in the exhibition as a case in point is the museum's Study for a Family Mural. The circa-1927 study is for a large, family portrait, conceived-but never executed-as a decoration for the living room of the Wyeth House. On the reverse of the canvas study is a partial label that references Everybody's Magazine. With the label as a tip, conservators took x-radiographs of the painting that revealed an earlier painting under the surface. The image underneath corresponds to an image published in the January 1919 issue of Everybody's. With this evidence, a missing painting was found.

Organized by Christine B. Podmaniczky, the museum's associate curator of N.C. Wyeth collections, the exhibition will also highlight other circumstances that prompted changes in paintings. Archival photographs document two earlier appearances of Wyeth's Newborn Calf, and printer's proofs prove that other images were altered at the suggestion of art editors or due to subsequent use by the artist.