McCoy, John - March 1969

Artist John McCoy, the brother-in-law of internationally-known artist Andrew Wyeth, died Thursday in West Chester at age 79.

He had been at Friends Hall nursing home for the last three years in failing health, according to the family.

McCoy, best known for his landscapes of Pennsylvania and Maine, was a pupil of illustrator N.C. Wyeth. He studied with Wyeth's son, Andrew, and later married his daughter, Ann.

His father, John McCoy, was a Du Pont vice president from 1935 through 1947 and his brother, Charles, was the chemical firm's president and board chairman until he retired in 1973.

McCoy, born in California, originally planned a career in theater set design but shifted to painting in the 1930s at the urging of his future father-in-law, then one of the nation's top magazine and book illustrators.

George Weymouth, chairman of the nearby Brandywine Conservatory which operates the Brandywine River Museum where some of McCoy's work hangs, called him "a painter who loved the natural world and man's place in it."

Besides his widow, McCoy is survived by two daughters, Ann of Chadds Ford, Pa., and Maude Bent, Canaan, N.H.; a son, John, Ruidoso, N.M.; two brothers, Charles and William, both of Wilmington, Del., and seven grandchildren.

A graveside burial will be held tomorrow at Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church in Centerville, Del.1

• 1. Philadelphia Daily News, 7/8/1989