Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth, born in 1917, American painter, noted for his realistic studies of bleak rural landscapes and solitary, dignified human figures. His subjects were taken from the countryside of Pennsylvania and New England.

Andrew Newell Wyeth was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He received most of his training in art from his father, N. C. Wyeth, a noted illustrator and mural painter. Young Wyeth was so adept with watercolors that he had his first one-man show in New York City at the age of 20. He scored an immediate success with his watercolors of the Maine coast, where the Wyeth family spent summers. His early works show the influence of watercolors by American artist Winslow Homer. In them, Wyeth sought to capture the fleeting effects of light and weather.

Watercolor remained a medium favored by Wyeth, although he had begun working in tempera paint by the early 1940s. Wyeth’s paintings emphasize details of light and texture and are most often executed in warm, soft shades of brown and gray. He achieves great precision in his drawing, but it is always an expression of mood that he seeks rather than an exact reproduction of nature. His art has a deep melancholy strain.

Wyeth’s best-known work is Christina’s World (1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), a depiction of a Maine neighbor, Christina Olson, who was unable to walk as the result of childhood polio. Christina is shown stranded in a field of grass, looking toward her distant home, perhaps about to crawl toward it. Other popular works by Wyeth include Ground Hog Day (1959, Philadelphia Museum of Art), and Her Room (1963, Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine).

Wyeth was among the most popular painters of the mid-20th century. He received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, and in 1970 he became the first living artist to be accorded an exhibition in the White House. In 1986 his reputation was enhanced by the disclosure of some 240 previously unknown paintings and drawings, all of the same woman, which the artist had kept hidden while he created them over a period of 15 years. The works, including nudes, were of Helga Testorf, Wyeth’s longtime neighbor in Chadds Ford. Wyeth added another painting, Gone, to the Helga series in 2002.

Andrew Wyeth’s son, James Browning Wyeth, is also an artist. The Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford has a large collection of works by three generations of Wyeths. The N. C. Wyeth House and Studio have become part of the museum and are open for tours.