Andrew Wyeth

"Maga's Daughter."  Wyeth's realism and detail were exceptional.  1966
This is actually a portrait of Wyeth's wife, Betsy, daughter of Maga.
The portrait wasn't working until one day, Betsy became angry and a flush
rose in her cheeks.  The flush did it, and Wyeth captured it, along with the
Quaker hat.

"Siri"
From 1967-1972, Wyeth did a series of paintings of a teenaged
neighbor, Siri Erickson, sometimes clothed and sometimes nude.
He stopped when his wife objected, although he had just met another
neighbor, Helga Testorf, which he did not tell his wife.  More later.

"That Gentleman"

Wyeth wrote admiringly of his sitter for this portrait, his neighbor Tom Clark.
"His voice is gentle, he wit keen, and his wisdom enormous.  He is not a character,
but a very dignified gentleman who might otherwise have gone unrecorded."
Wyeth's painting techniques echo his penetrating observation of his subjects.
He gave his works an introspective, absorbing feeling b paring away details
and confining his palette to subdued brown, blacks, and grays, painstakingly
executed in tempera.

"Winter" 1946 has a neighbor boy, Tom Lane, running down a hill.
Wyeth's father died on the other side of the hill.

Andrew Newell Wyeth III was born on July 12, 1917, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the youngest of five siblings had by mother Carolyn and father N.C. Wyeth, the famed illustrator. N.C. was a major, sometimes frightening presence in the household who guided his son's artistic talents and skill.  Andrew was home schooled by his parents.  Three of his siblings became artists, as well as two brothers-in-law and his son Jamie Wyeth.

"Monday Morning"

Wyeth often chose a small portion of a scene, a specific moment of the day,

a window, the effects of light.  He painted the buildings and objects around his
home and town, as well as his neighbors.

"Ides of March"

Wyeth often used his dog as a subject.

Andrew, who would do earlier work submitted under his father's name, took to painting using regular watercolor and dry-brush watercolor techniques, eventually adopting the tempera method.  Wyeth wed Betsy James at the start of the new decade. Fusing personal and professional worlds, she would become his business manager and take an active interest in shaping his public image.

"Christina's World."  1948  tempera

"Christina's World" is  one of the best-known American paintings of the middle 20th century. It depicts a woman lying on the ground in a treeless, mostly tawny field, looking up at a gray house on the horizon; a barn and various other small outbuildings are adjacent to the house. This tempera work, done in a realist style called magic realism, is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as a part of its permanent collection.

The woman in the painting is Anna Christina Olson (3 May 1893 – 27 January 1968). She suffered from polio.  Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when he saw her crawling across a field while he was watching from a window in the house. Wyeth had a summer home in the area and was on friendly terms with Olson, using her and her younger brother as the subjects of paintings from 1940 to 1968.  Although Olson was the inspiration and subject of the painting, she was not the primary model—Wyeth's wife Betsy posed as the torso of the painting.  Olson was 55 at the time Wyeth created the work.

"Distant Thunder"  1961

Wyeth's wife Betsy had been picking blueberries and fell asleep on

a warm afternoon; their dog hears thunder in the distance.

Wyeth garnered major acclaim with his 1948 piece, "Christina's World," showcasing a friend of Betsy's who had been stricken with polio making her way across a field without a wheelchair. Many of Wyeth's subjects were neighbors and locales in his surrounding area, as he generally kept close to home.  He spent winters in Chadd's Ford, PA, close to Philadelphia, and summers in Cushing, Maine.  Wyeth became famed for the quality of realism and detail found in his art, often creating moody pastorals, while also being criticized by some as not being sufficiently avant-garde and certainly not abstract.  MOMA purchased "Christina's World" immediately and paid only $1800.

"Pentecost."

Wyeth remembered not the sermon at church, but the way the wind was blowing and the
 fishing nets were billowing as they walked home from church one Sunday morning.

"Spring Fed"  1967

Windows, open and closed, were frequent subjects of Wyeth's paintings.  They allow us to

see two worlds, one inside and one outside, like the two worlds of an artist - the

painting and the physical reality.

"Frostbitten"  1962 in another window painting.

"Groundhog Day"  1959

A third window painting, filled with atmosphere

and light and revealing two worlds at once.

Nonetheless, exhibitions of his art, which were shown internationally, often brought in record numbers of museum visitors. Wyeth also went on to receive many honors. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and later received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990 from President George H.W. Bush, the first artist to receive the award.

"Wind from the Sea"  1947

"The Patriot"

Wyeth first saw World War I veteran Ralph Cline in a Veterans Day parade
and realized that the old soldier was the epitome of a proud and patriotic American.
Wyeth described his Maine neighbor as "Absolutely the patriot.  The American
flag means everything to him.  Kind of man that fought at Concord Bridge."

"Braids / Helga."

In 1986, it was revealed that Wyeth had been painting more than 200 clothed and nude portraits of German neighbor Helga Testorff between 1970 and 1985. The works were the subject of a Time magazine cover and would be shown in Washington, D.C., at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and were eventually sold for millions to an art collector from Philadelphia.

"Helga"

Wyeth died on January 16, 2009, at the age of 91, in the town of his birth. 

Wyeth in his studio in Chadd's Ford, PA as young man

Andrew Wyeth in old age and a fur-collared parka.

"Quaker"  A window, light, atmosphere, a quiet interior, suggestive.  Wyeth

Many of Wyeth's works can be seen at the Brandywine Museum near his home and
studio in Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania, a few miles SW of Philadelphia.
There is a special large centenary exhibition this year, 2017.

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