Andrew Wyeth 2

Biography of Andrew Wyeth 2

Andrew Wyeth self portait

Andrew Wyeth was an American realist painter, born in 1917. Primarily working in a regionalist style, he was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century.
The youngest of the five children, Andrew was home-tutored because of his fragile health. 

Real friendship

Wyeth’s father, illustrator and artist N.C. Wyeth was the only teacher that he had. Due to being schooled at home, he led a sheltered, obsessively focused life. Born on July 12, 1917 on Henry Thoreau’s 100th birthday, his father, a fond worshipper of Thoreau’s poetry and philosophy, found this both coincidental and exciting. Andrew started drawing at a young age. By the time he was a teenager, his father brought him into his studio for the only art lessons he ever had. N.C. was an attentive father, fostering each of the children’s interests and talents. Their home bustled with creative activity and competition, which led to successful artistic carriers of all five of them.
Although he was thought of as a realist, Andrew thought of himself as an abstractionist. ‘My people, my objects breathe in a different way. There is another core – an excitement that is definitely abstract. My God, when you really begin to peer into something, a simple object, and realize the profound meaning of that thing – if you have an emotion about it, there is no end. One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes.’

Beuty

Andrew’s love of rural landscapes and his sense of romance are displayed in his most common subjects of matter – land and people around him, both in his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and at his summer home in Cushing, Maine. Wyeth maintained this personal style for over seventy years, gravitating to several identifiable landscape subjects and models. His solitary walks were the primary means of inspiration for his images. He developed an extraordinary intimacy with the land and sea and strove for a spiritual understanding based on history and unspoken emotion, typically creating dozens of studies on a subject in pencil or loosely brushed watercolour before executing a finished painting, either in watercolour, drybrush or egg tempera.

Helga Testorf

He painted his most famous work in 1948, named Christina’s World. This tempera work is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as a part of its permanent collection. His neighbour, who, crippled from an undiagnosed chronic condition, inspired Wyeth and unable to walk, spent most of her time at home. The image depicts Christina Olson, sprawled on a dry field facing her house in the distance.
Another important work in his oeuvre was a series of 247 studies of the German-born Helga Testorf. Wyeth painted her over the period 1971–85 without the knowledge of either his wife or Helga’s husband. He observed and painted her in intimate detail, making an extensive study of her physical landscape set within Wyeth’s customary landscapes. Portrayed as unsmiling and passive, yet within those limitations, Wyeth manages to convey subtle qualities of character and mood, as he does in many of his best portraits. This extensive study of one subject studied in differing contexts and emotional states is unique in American art.

Early Career Precious basquet Wyeth was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania in 1917. His father, Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945), was a famous artist and illustrator, a pupil of the artist Howard Pyle, created over 3,000 paintings, and illustrated 112 books during his lifetime. Wyeth junior was a sickly child, and was home-schooled, under the guidance of his father. He started drawing from a young age and was introduced to oils, watercolours and egg tempera painting. He was a keen student of art history, including Greek Antiquities, the Italian Renaissance, the Rococo and the Romantics. Wyeth had a particular fondness however for American artists, in particular the American landscape/seascape painter and printmaker Winslow Homer. His father encouraged his artistic talent and fostered a love of the local natural landscape. In 1937, at the age of 21, Wyeth had his first solo exhibition of watercolour painting, at the Macbeth Art Gallery in New York. The exhibition sold out almost instantly, and his career in the art world was assured. In 1945, his father was killed in a car accident, and the personal tragedy was to have a lasting effect on his artistic development. After this point, his colour palette became more muted in tone, and his subject matter more realistic. His work was more emotionally charged and a Symbolist influence can be seen. Three years later he painted his most famous work: Christina's World (1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Christina's World Christina's World Wyeth painted Christina's World at his home farm in Cushing, Maine. Now, a very famous landscape painting, it depicts his neighbour Christina Olson sprawled on a field, with her back to the viewer, as she faces her own farmhouse in the distance. Due to polio, the real-life Christina was unable to walk and was often spotted by her neighbour crawling across the field. To Wyeth she was an inspiration 'limited physically but by no means spiritually'. He said 'the challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless.' The painting is vastly spacious and invites the viewer to create his or her own narrative. This invitation to narrate was something his contemporary Edward Hopper would master, and which would encourage many other artists to try the same, including the popular Scottish artist Jack Vettriano. Helga Testorf Collection Wyeth typically enjoyed painting vacant wooden houses marked by time, along with deserted rooms, which contained details symbolic of a severe life. He often created dozens of studies, sketches and watercolours before beginning a painting. He varied the media he used from watercolour painting, dry brush and egg tempera. He avoided the use of oil paints. Christina's World was in fact executed with egg tempera. Wyeth also practised portrait art, including a series of paintings of a mistress that only became public years later. Between 1971 and 1985, Wyeth created over 240 studies of his neighbour Helga Testorf. These studies were carried out without the knowledge of either participants' partners. In these studies, Helga rarely smiles, yet Wyeth manages to convey a variety of moods and characteristics of his model. The collection was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in 1987 and went on to tour various other museums and art galleries.   Regata The Regionalism Movement in America Like Grant Wood (1892-1942), Wyeth's work can be categorised as Regionalist. Regionalism was an American Realist art movement which was popular during the 1930s. (It was the midwest version of the broader movement known as American Scene Painting.) Regionalist artists shunned city life, preferring to paint the dustbowls and small towns of America. Other popular exponents were Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) and John Steuart Curry (1897-1946). The movement gained popularity during the Great Depression, for its reassuring, warm images of the American heartland. Proponents of Regionalism supported realism as a defence against the influence of abstract art which was rapidly arriving from Europe. The debate between the merits of Social Realism, Regionalism and Abstraction raged in America throughout the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1940s two very clear camps had emerged: Regionalism and Social Realism on the one side and Abstract Expressionism on the other. Regionalism's subsequent loss of status in the art world was mainly due to the ultimate triumph of abstract art. However, many art critics argue that Regionalism played an important role in linking Academic Realism and Abstract Expressionism, in the way that the Neo-Impressionists like Van Gogh, Paul Gaugin and Cezanne were able to provide a bridge from Impressionism to Fauvism, Expressionism, Futurism and Cubism. Friendship care Exhibitions In 1950 an exhibition entitled Symbolic Realism in American Painting was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, which was a retrospective of Wyeth's art from the previous decade. In 1954 he participated in a group exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, which focused on a comparison of Realism and Abstract American art. Wyeth was an avid sketcher, and an exhibition of his drawings, watercolours and tempera works were exhibited in 1967 at the Oklahoma Museum of Art. In 1976, he was greatly honoured with a retrospective at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1978 he represented the States at the Biennale Internationale d'Art in Paris. In the late 1980's Wyeth's 'Helga' paintings and sketches were exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and the Palazzo Reale, Milan. In 1995, a major retrospective of the artist's work was held at the Aichi Prefectural Museum in Japan, and again in 2009 after the artist's death. Reputation and Legacy Wyeth has been much criticised for his popularity in artist circles. Although some claim, he is an outstanding exemplar of Realism, others counter that when his works are viewed together they reveal very little power of observation. In quantity, they say his paintings reveal themselves quite mundane and routine. (For a more gritty realism, see George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925) and other members of the New York Ashcan school.) Although museum retrospectives of his work always draw huge crowds, it did not stop a Village Voice art critic from opining that Wyeth's paintings are 'formulaic stuff, not very effective even as illustrational realism.' However, advocates of Wyeth say his paintings are highly emotive, symbolic and carry an underlying abstraction. (See also the critics' reaction to Norman Rockwell, the populist American illustrator.) Collections Wyeth died in January 2009, at the grand age of 91. Today, as one of the great 20th century painters of America, Wyeth's works can be seen in many of the best art museums, including the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art NY, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Nelson-Atkins Museum (Kansas); Arkansas Art Centre and the White House. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2006. In 1977, Wyeth became the first American painter, since John Singer Sargent to be elected to the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Paris. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2007 from US President Bush. On January 16, 2009, at the age of 91, Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep in Chads Ford, Pennsylvania, after a brief illness. His children, wife Betsy and granddaughter Victoria surrounded him. Editors ‘note: to help edition I added some subjective pictures names. With affection, Ruben