Andrew Wyeth

(American, 1917 – 2009)

“Most artists look for something fresh to paint; frankly I find that quite boring.
For me, it is much more exciting to find fresh meaning in something familiar.”
— Andrew Wyeth

An Internationally exhibited, award winning, Realist artist, Andrew Wyeth was one of the most popular artists of the twentieth century. He was one of the finest American Scene painters, applauded for his realism in portraiture and life in the country, using radical accuracy and detail. A remarkable aspect of Wyeth’s work is that much of it was from memory and imagination, which is unheard of by most Realist artists, who usually study photographs. His art is recognizable aesthetically through his celebration of the simple life of rural America, his distinctive color palette, and often, the effect of solitude. Wyeth’s work is widely recognized for the quality of realism and detail, often in moody pastorals.

Andrew Newell Wyeth III was born on July 12, 1917, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania - the youngest of five siblings. His mother and father were Carolyn and N.C. Wyeth, the famed illustrator. The young Wyeth, like his father, enjoyed the poetry of Robert Frost and writings of Henry Thoreau, and related to their relationships with nature. N.C. was a major, sometimes frightening, presence in the household. He guided his son, cultivating his artistic talents and skills into those of the world-renowned painter he became. Wyeth, who would submit his early work under his father's name, took to painting using regular watercolor and dry-brush watercolor techniques, and eventually adopted the tempera method. He typically created dozens of studies on a subject in pencil or loosely brushed watercolor before executing a finished painting, in watercolor, drybrush, or egg tempera, avoiding traditional oil paints. In 1936, Wyeth had his first showing at the Art Alliance of Philadelphia. His one-man show debut at New York City's Macbeth Galley the following year was extremely successful; all the pieces sold immediately. Wyeth wed Betsey James on May 15, 1940. She would also become his business manager and take an active interest in shaping his public image, merging their personal and professional worlds.

Wyeth garnered major acclaim with his 1948 piece, Christina's World, featuring a friend and neighbor with a physical handicap preventing her from normal use of her lower body making her way across a field without a wheelchair. People appreciate his vivid landscapes, portraiture, and his fusions of the two. Many of Wyeth's subjects were neighbors and locales in his surrounding area, as he generally kept close to home. He developed a spiritual connection with the earth and ocean, using the unspoken emotion and history in his work. Wyeth’s artistic approach had more complexity that than it may first appear, and garnered a good deal of controversy. Abstraction had gained currency in American art and critical thinking in the middle of the twentieth century. As a representational artist, Wyeth’s work stood in sharp contrast and critics were often harsh with him. They admired the Surrealist elements found in some of his early work, but decried his nostalgia as it dismissed major historical and aesthetic events, like World War II and Abstract Expressionism. However, Wyeth felt his art was rooted in modernism and that there was an underlying abstraction in it. While Wyeth used a Realist aesthetic style, the elements in his paintings were intended to convey deeper ideas and messages. His fans find not only striking formal beauty in his oil paintings, but also symbolism and powerful emotions.

Despite critical disapproval, exhibitions of Wyeth’s art, shown internationally, often brought in record numbers of museum visitors, and he became very successful. The path of Realism proved rewarding for him; his career flourished for over seventy years. Wyeth received many honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990 from President George H.W. Bush- the first artist to receive the award.

Interestingly, in 1986, Wyeth revealed that he had painted more than 200 clothed and nude portraits of German neighbor Helga Testorff over the past decade and a half - a secret they had even kept from their spouses. The works were the subject of a Time magazine cover and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. would show them. They eventually sold for over $10 million to an art aficionado from Japan. The insinuation of an affair put a strain on Wyeth’s marriage, but he maintained that they had not had a physical relationship.

On January 16, 2009, Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep at his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, at age 91. He was a master of various mediums including charcoal, watercolor, dry brush, tempera, and many others. Among the legion of books on his life and work are, The Helga Pictures (1987), Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography (1995), and Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic (2005). Wyeth’s art had some of the highest prices ever paid for a living American artist. Now Andrew Wyeth is considered one of the most influential American painters, along with Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Winslow Homer, and a few others. His pieces continue to be exhibited and purchased worldwide.

American Fine Art, Inc. is proud to feature the original works and limited editions of Andrew Wyeth. Visit our 12,000 sq. ft. showroom in Scottsdale, Arizona or call today. Our website is offered only as a limited place to browse or refresh your memory and is not a reflection of our current inventory. To learn more about collecting, pricing, value, or any other art information, please contact one of our International Art Consultants. We look forward to giving you the one on one attention you deserve when building your fine art collection. We hope you find our website helpful and look forward to seeing you in Scottsdale soon.