Andrew Wyeth is a contemporary American painter; he is the youngest child of N.C. Wyeth, and
the father of Jamie Wyeth, both artists as well. Wyeth
is a master of water color and egg tempera
media, which he uses to create vibrant portraits and landscapes.
His work is heavily influenced by the pastoral landscapes of the
Brandywine River valley and the Maine coast where the Wyeth clan lived.
Andrew was born in 1917 into a magical family. He was the youngest of
five children, four of whom grew up to be artists themselves (the fifth, an
engineer). His father, N.C. was perhaps the most famous student of
Howard Pyle's Wilmington School of art,
and was a masterful artist in his own right. N.C. encouraged
all of his children to explore their creativity and imaginations in their
rural home, often encouraging his children to produce plays about
pirates and Robin Hood. (And more often than not, N.C. joined
in the fun!) Andrew had no formal schooling, but took up graphic arts like
his father, showing talent at a very young age. Mentored both by his father
and by his sister Carolyn, Andrew's early work was in water color featuring
the landscapes he thrived in. He gained his father's ability to create
realistic and lively scenes along with some of his sister's tendency to
brood, a tendency which perfectly matched the dark woods, stone walls and
often leaden skies of rural Pennsylvania. Andrew was later
introduced to the egg tempera medium by N.C.'s young apprentice,
Peter Hurd. The rest is history. Since the start of his career, his
paintings have been some of the most sought-after works by an American
artist.
His most famous piece is probably Christina's World featuring
Christina Olson, a handicapped woman lying on her side, gazing up at a
Maine farmhouse she is unable to reach. He has several other well
known paintings, often featuring the landscapes of his life and his neighbors;
for example, Snow Hill shows several neighbors dancing around a
maypole on Karl Kuerner's Hill (Kuerner's Hill itself was another
favorite landscape subject, as in the famous Evening at Kuerner's).
One of his largest series of paintings were his "Helga Pictures", featuring
his redheaded, pig-tailed neighbor Helga Testorf in both landscapes
and portraits. He painted over 200 images of Helga between 1971 and 1986,
which created a bit of a sensation when they were first displayed in public --
they were the first exhibition at the National Gallery of Art by a
living artist. For his contributions to American art, he received the
Congressional Gold Medal in 1990, the first artist to be so honored.
Wyeth married Betsy James in 1940 when he was 22 (she was 18). They had two
sons: Nicholas (in 1943) and Jamie in (1946). Nicholas
went on to be an art dealer, while Jamie became a well-known painter in his
own right. Andrew still paints, dividing his time between Pennsylvania and
Maine. His work is featured at several museums around the country. The
Brandywine River Museum in Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania and the
Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine both have extensive collections
of Andrew's work, despite being well outside major metropolitan areas. The
former (which I've often visited) is well-worth your time.
Updated May 31, 2002
Everything2 editor's note: Andrew Wyeth died in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on January 16, 2009