Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Newell Wyeth (born July 12, 1917) is an American realist painter, one of the best-known of the 20th century. He is sometimes referred to as the "Painter of the People" due to his popularity with the American public. Wyeth's favorite subject is the land and inhabitants around his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and those near his summer home in Cushing, Maine. His most famous work, and one of the most well-known images in 20th century American art, is Christina's World (1948), in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

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Andrew Newell Wyeth

Childhood/ Early career

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Long Limb, Tempera, 1999, by Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth is the son of N.C. Wyeth, a famous American illustrator and artist. He was born July 12, 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The youngest of five children, Andrew Wyeth was home-tutored and learned art from his father. In 1937 at age twenty, Wyeth had his first one-man exhibition of watercolors at Macbeth Gallery in New York City. The entire inventory of paintings quickly sold out, and Wyeth's career was launched.

Father's death / 1940s

In October 1945 Andrew Wyeth's father and his three-year-old grandson were killed when their car stalled on railroad tracks near their home and was struck by a train. Wyeth has referred to his father's death as a formative emotional event in his artistic career, in addition to a personal tragedy. It was shortly after this time that Wyeth's art consolidated into his mature and enduring style, characterized by a subdued color palette, highly realistic renderings, and the depiction of emotionally charged symbolic objects.

In 1948 Wyeth began painting Anna and Karl Kuerner, neighbors of the Wyeths in Chadds Ford. Ironically the Kuerner's farm is just a few yards from the railroad tracks where N.C. Wyeth died used to be. The Kuerner's farm is now available to tour through the Brandywine River Museum. Like the Olsons in Maine, the Kuerners and their farm became one of Wyeth's most important subjects for nearly 30 years.

Mature career

Dividing his time between Pennsylvania and Maine, Wyeth has maintained a relatively consistent realist painting style for over fifty years. He has tended to gravitate to several identifiable landscape subjects and models, to which he would return repeatedly over a period of decades. He typically creates dozens of studies on a subject in pencil or loosely brushed watercolor before executing a finished painting, either in watercolor, drybrush (a watercolor style in which the water is squeezed from the brush), or egg tempera. His works have fetched increasingly higher prices with his growing fame, and today Wyeth's major works can sell for in excess of one million dollars from private dealers and at auction.

Critical reaction

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Late Fall, watercolour on paper, 67.3cm x 47cm, 1981, by Andrew Wyeth

Wyeth's art has long been controversial. As a representational artist, Wyeth's paintings have sharply contrasted with the prevailing trend of abstraction that gained currency in American art in the middle of the 20th century.

Museum exhibitions of Wyeth's paintings have set attendance records, but many art critics have been heavily critical of his work. Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The Village Voice, derided his paintings as "Formulaic stuff not very effective even as illustrational 'realism'". Hence the most common criticisms are that Wyeth's art verges on illustration, and that his predominantly rural subject matter is heavily weighted with sentiment. It is possible, however, that some critics dislike his work simply because it is so popular and appeals to people because it is representational in nature.

Admirers of Wyeth's art believe that his paintings, in addition to sometimes displaying overt beauty, contain strong emotional currents, symbolic content and underlying abstraction. Most observers of Wyeth's art agree that he is exceptionally skilled at handling the mediums of watercolor and egg tempera (which uses egg yolk as a medium). Except for early experimentations, Wyeth has avoided using traditional oil paints.

Museum collections

Andrew Wyeth is in the collections of most major American museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art; the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock; and the White House, in Washington, DC. Especially large collections of Wyeth's art are in the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine; and the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina. A major retrospective of Andrew Wyeth's work occurred at the Philadelphia Museum of Art[1] from March 29, 2006 - July 16, 2006.

Honors and awards

Wyeth has been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees. In 1963, Andrew Wyeth became the first painter to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was conferred by President John F. Kennedy. In 1977, he became the first American artist since John Singer Sargent elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1980, Wyeth became the first living American artist to be elected to Britain's Royal Academy. In 1987 Wyeth received a D.F.A. from Bates College.

Trivia

• Andrew Wyeth's brother, Nathaniel C. Wyeth, invented the plastic soda pop bottle.

• Wyeth was often referenced by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (a longtime admirer) in the comic strip Peanuts. In one strip the character Snoopy was presented with a bill for "psychiatic help" 20 cents and states "I refuse to sell my Andrew Wyeth".

• Andrew Wyeth's father is the renowned illustrator N.C. Wyeth, known for his illustrations for Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe.

• Tom Duffield, the production designer for the American remake of The Ring, drew inspiration from Wyeth's paintings for the look of the film.

• M. Night Shyamalan based his movie The Village on paintings by Andrew Wyeth. The Village was filmed in Chadds Ford not far from Wyeth's studio.

• John Testorf, the husband of Helga Testorf, perhaps Wyeth's most famous (and infamous) subject, was out of the country at the time of the Helga paintings' unveiling. Also unaware of their existence, he was, upon returning to America, very much surprised to see his wife on the cover of Time (magazine).

See also

• Jamie Wyeth - artist son of Andrew Wyeth.

Further reading

• Meryman, R.: Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life, HarperCollins 1996. ISBN 0-06-017113-8.
• Wyeth, A.: Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography, Bulfinch Press 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2217-1.

Galleries online

• birdsnest.com - Andrew Wyeth
• Artnet - Andrew Wyeth
• Christina's World in the MoMA Online Collection

External links

• Smithsonian Magazine Article on Andrew Wyeth
• The Brandywine Museum