| George Alexis Wemouth Better known as Frolic Weymouth |
|
|---|---|
| Born | 1936 Wilmington, Delaware, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Westtown School St. Mark’s in Massachusetts Yale |
| Occupation | Artist and Conservationist |
| Spouse | Anna Brelsford McCoy Divorced in 1979 after 18 years |
| Children | Mac (adopted) |
| Parents | George Tyler Weymouth and Dulcinea Ophelia Payne du Pont |
George Alexis Weymouth, (born 1936) known better as “Frolic” Weymouth, is an American artist, whip or stager, and conservationist. He lives in and protects the Brandywine Valley.
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His mother, Dulcinea (Deo) Ophelia Payne du Pont (1909) was the oldest of Eugene du Pont, Jr.’s four daughters making Frolic six generations removed from the founder of the DuPont Company, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. She married Frolic’s father, entrepreneur George Tyler Weymouth.
Weymouth was christened George Alexis Weymouth. Shortly after his birth, his brother, Eugene lost his foxhound. After repeatedly asking his mother “Where’s Frolic?” his exasperated mother replied, “Here’s your damn Frolic,” and thrust George before Gene. Thus Weymouth is named after a dog and the common misconception that the name resulted from his conception is incorrect.
Weymouth was quite close to Andrew Wyeth and his family through his artistry. He was married to Anna Brelsford McCoy, Andrew Wyeth’s niece and herself an artist. They divorced in 1979. Jamie Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth’s son, married Weymouth’s cousin Phyllis.
Weymouth’s early work, done in egg tempera, was often highly personal. His portrait of his grandfather, Eugene du Pont, features the fine detail of a herringbone suit coat and the worn fabric of a favorite recliner. His “The Way Back” (1963) is a self-portrait of only his hands guiding a single horse carriage up the lane to Big Bend, his home on the Brandywine.
Weymouth has painted portraits of Luciano Pavarotti (1982) and later, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1995), Queen Elizabeth’s husband, which hangs in Windsor Castle. Weymouth was selected by NASA to paint at Cape Kennedy during the moon shots.
There is an excellent catalog of his paintings from a 2001 exhibition of his works.[1] The paintings mentioned here and many more are depicted.
Through his circle of fellow artists, Weymouth became a close friend of Andrew and Jamie Wyeth. Weymouth was the confidant who discretely hid Andrew Wyeth’s nudes of Prussian-born neighbor and caretaker Helga Testorf for 17 years before they became public. In the 2004 documentary “The Way Back: A Portrait of George A. Weymouth,”[2] Andrew Wyeth said he didn’t “know of anyone who means as much to me.”
In the mid-1960s, Weymouth convinced F.I. du Pont and William Prickett to help him buy two parcels along the Brandywine that were threatened with industrial development. This purchase led to the founding of the Brandywine Conservancy, a unique environmental, arts and cultural preservation organization. Frolic has been the Chairman of the Board since then.[3]
In 1969, Weymouth donated his property to the Brandywine Conservancy as its first conservation easement. His home, Big Bend, surrounded by Brandywine Creek on three sides, is just inside Pennsylvania at the northern Delaware border. The period-furnished 1750s stone house is surrounded by gardens. His donation inspired the Hon. Harry G. Haskell Jr., Ford B. Draper and Jamie Wyeth to follow suit. The four easements protected almost 340 acres (1.4 km2) and 5 1/2 miles along the Brandywine Creek.
In 1984, the King Ranch in Pennsylvania went to market. Rumored buyers included a nuclear power plant, Disney and a real estate developer. Weymouth organized a conservation team to purchase the 5,380 contiguous acres (21,800,000 m2) for $11.5 million. The land is now conserved and includes the 775-acre (3.14 km2) Laurels Preserve.
In 1971, a huge mill along the Brandywine went up for sale. Through a communication error during the auction Weymouth and the Conservancy acquired it as future museum space. Weymouth has been chairman of the Conservency’s Brandywine River Museum since it opened in 1971.
"Whip" is a term used to describe the owner and driver of a coach and Frolic Weymouth is certainly a whip. Weymouth is internationally recognized for his impressive collection of antique coaches and carriages and he uses them regularly. He has deeded rights-of-way on neighboring properties to be able to drive his four-in-hand around northern Delaware.
He initiated and always leads the coaching event at Winterthur Museum’s Point-to-Point in Delaware. He has permanently retired a trophy at the Devon Horse Show in Pennsylvania.[4] In the summer of 1985, he spent three months in England and managed to drive a carriage 1,000 miles (1,600 km). He whipped another 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in France.[5]
For one of his more spectacular drives, he drove from Manhattan's Upper East Side to Saratoga Springs, New York and then on to Shelburne, Vermont. Carriages are not uncommon around Central Park but taking the carriage through Harlem was a sensation.[6]
Weymouth maintains “it’s no big deal” being a du Pont. In 2000, 3,700 members of the du Pont family attended a reunion at Longwood Gardens. Several years later he wondered “How many there are now? Du Ponts have always been busy in bed.”
In a conversation about Andy Warhol, Jamie Wyeth expressed the opinion that Frolic Weymouth was the “real character.”[7]
Weymoth has surrounded himself with art and gardens. A wonderful photograph of the back of Big Bend is available.[8] A centerpiece in Weymouth’s Big Bend is “The Vidette,” an enormous painting of a horseman in the snow[9] dating from 1912. This N.C. Wyeth masterpiece is occasionally on loan for exhibitions. Anna Hyatt Huntington’s “Greyhounds Playing” graces the garden. Elsewhere, a carved wooden Indonesian fertility bench features two interlocked monkeys, highlighting Weymouth’s admitted fascination with fornication.
Each evening, Weymouth names one beautiful thing he saw that day. “Then, the rest of the ugliness goes away.”
1971-77 Appointed by President Richard Nixon to the Commission of Fine Arts
1974 Serves on the Visual Arts Panel of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
1981 Receives the University of Delaware merit award for community service
1989 Receives National Society of Fund Raising Executives’ Outstanding Fund Raising Volunteer award
1990 Receives the National Arts Club annual award
1999 Receives Cliveden Heritage Preservation award
2000 Receives Garden Clubs of America special citation award for exemplary service in the field of conservation and environmental protection
1991 George A. Weymouth: A Retrospective at the Brandywine River Museum
1991 George A. Weymouth: A Retrospective at the Jacksonville Art Museum
2001 George A. Weymouth: Landscapes and Portraits of Brandywine at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Frolic Weymouth's painting cannot be shown here for copyright reasons, but reference 1 links to a catalog containing a nice selection of his more important works.
A wonderful photograph of the back of Big Bend is available at the link of reference 8. A photograph of "The Vidette" is available at the link of reference 9.
