Background

Andrew Wyeth was born on July 12, 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, United States. He was a son of Carolyn (Bockius) Wyeth and Newell Converse Wyeth, a renowned artist and illustrator. Andrew was the youngest of five children.

Education

Andrew was a weak and sickly child. His formal schooling consisted of three months in the first grade of a country grammar school. Thereafter, he studied at home with private tutors, although, he never really mastered spelling. However, Andrew learned to draw before he could read, and eventually he assisted his father in creating illustrations.

Also, in his early years, Wyeth showed his design of a toy miniature theater to his father. Realizing his potential for becoming an artist, his father started instructing him in art. Newell Convers Wyeth taught him necessary techniques of painting and the use of light and shadows in paintings along with the paintings' relation to life and mood. He allowed his son to create his own individual identity as an artist. Under his father’s guidance, Andrew started painting in watercolours. During this time, he studied art history and was influenced by the painters of Renaissance period.

Moreover, Wyeth received numerous Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from different educational establishments, including those from Colby College in 1954, Harvard University in 1955, Dickinson College in 1958, Nasson College in 1963, University of Delaware in 1964 and others.

Also, Andrew was awarded several Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from such educational institutions, as Tufts University in 1963, Princeton University in 1965, Franklin and Marshall College in 1965, University of Vermont in 1988 and others.

Career

During his teenage years, Wyeth's early forays into watercolor painting were of the Maine landscape and ocean vistas, and with these, he enjoyed his first one-man show at New York's William Macbeth Gallery in 1937. All of the works were sold, but Wyeth felt almost disheartened by his early success. He began to experiment with rendering the human form, perhaps the most difficult of all subjects. As an exercise, his father recommended, that he sketch a skeleton from every possible angle.

Andrew's work as a young American artist of this period set him apart from his contemporaries, who were busy experimenting with more radical, abstract styles. Noted art critic, John Russell, remarked to Newsweek, that "Wyeth's work has always had a secret and subterranean motivation, conscious or unconscious, which surfaces in strange and unexpected ways".

In 1945, Wyeth's father was killed at a railroad crossing in Chadds Ford, and the sudden death made Wyeth resolve to take his artistic career more seriously. He began to use models, often painting them over several years, a practice, which he began in 1939, when he met Christina Olson. The Maine woman was a friend of Betsy Merle James, who would later become Wyeth's wife. Olson was paralyzed from polio, and Wyeth's image of her in a field, "Christina's World" (1948), is perhaps his most famous work. He continued to render Olson, or her Maine house, in a series of works, that stretched on until the late 1960's, including "Miss Olson" (1952) and "Weather Side" (1965).

Wyeth and his wife Betsy bought a set of farm buildings in Chadds Ford, dating back to the 18th century and restored it as a studio for him and a home for the couple and their two sons, Jamie and Nicholas. In the late 1940's, Wyeth became fascinated with Karl Kuerner, a farmer of German origin, who lived nearby, and Wyeth painted images of Kuerner and his property, as well as his wife Anna, over the next few decades. In Maine, where the Wyeth family spent the summer months, the artist also befriended another neighbor, who became a frequent subject. Teenager Siri Erickson was the subject of several portraits, that Andrew painted during the 1960's.

In 1967, Wyeth was given a large retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Earlier, and for many years, he was more or less systematically ignored by American art officials, although not by critics, because his work seemed so completely removed from mainstream American art. In 1970, Wyeth had a one-man exhibition in the White House, the first ever held there.

Wyeth's name, however, remains best associated in the public's mind with the "Helga" media event of 1986. Apparently, the artist had been sketching and painting a German immigrant by the name of Helga Testorf since the early 1970's. With her reddish-blond hair, Teutonic face, and twin braids, Helga made a quietly enigmatic subject, and Wyeth's obsession with her as a subject eventually numbered 240 works of art — supposedly without the knowledge of his wife. In early 1986, he invited Leonard E. B. Andrews, an American art collector, who had previously acquired a few of his works, into his studio. Andrews later recalled, that he was overwhelmed by the drama of the cache, and asserted, that the works as a whole were a "national treasure". He purchased the Helga series in its entirety. The stern visage of Helga, as depicted by Wyeth in the 1979 tempera Braids, appeared on magazine covers throughout the summer of 1986 in the sensationalist stories, that accompanied the unleashing of such a large, secret stash of paintings by an acclaimed American artist. Later Andrews reportedly tried to sell the series to a buyer in Japan for $45 million, having paid only $6 million for them in 1986.

In 2006, Wyeth's retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art drew over 175,000 visitors, that was the highest attendance ever at the museum for a living artist.

Achievements

• Andrew Wyeth was a renowned realist painter, whose best-known works include "Christina's World", "Ground Hog Day", "Her Room" and others. He was unusual among modern artists in that he painted from nature, choosing for his subject matter the people, landmarks and countryside of the New England states and Pennsylvania.
  
  During his lifetime, the painter received numerous awards, including Presidential Medal of Freedom (1963), Congressional Gold Medal (1988), National Medal of Arts (2007) and many others.
  
  In 1977, Wyeth became the first American artist since John Singer Sargent to be elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. Some time later, in 1980, he became the first living American artist to be elected to Britain’s Royal Academy.
  
  Today, his works are kept in the collections of different museums, art institutions and galleries around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and others.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • The Carry

  • The Patriot

  • The Kuerners

  • Trodden Weed

  • Evening At Kuerners

  • Maga's Daughter

  • Below Dover

  • Coming Storm

  • Little Caldwells Island

  • Conch Shell

  • Battle Ensign

  • Demolished June, 1995

  • Geraniums

  • French Twist

  • Garret Room

  • Miss Erickson

  • Night Sleeper

  • Oil Lamp

  • Chester County

  • Snow Hill

  • Adrift

  • Two If By Sea

  • Renfield

  • Dr. Syn

  • Lovers

  • Christina's World

  • Ground Hog Day

  • Her Room

Views

Quotations: "I paint my life."

"I like to think that I'm so far behind that I'm ahead."

"Art to me, is seeing. I think you have got to use your eyes, as well as your emotion, and one without the other just doesn't work. That's my art."

"Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing — then a work of art may happen."

"I get letters from people about my work. The thing that pleases me most is that my work touches their feelings. In fact, they don't talk about the paintings. They end up telling me the story of their life or how their father died."

"The most irritating experience for an artist is to have his work criticized before it is finished."

"To have all your life's work and to have them along the wall, it's like walking in with no clothes on. It's terrible."

"One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes."

"I don't think that there is anything that is really magical unless it has a terrifying quality."

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."

"I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious."

Membership

Andrew was a member of different organizations, including American Watercolor Society, National Institute of Arts and Letters, Soviet Academy of Arts (honorary member) and others. Also, during his lifetime, Andrew held the post of a director of different clubs, societies and art associations, including Chester County Art Association, National Audubon Society, Philadelphia Water Color Society, Washington Water Color Association, Baltimore Watercolor Society and others.

• 

  the first American artist since John Singer Sargent to be elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts

  Académie des Beaux-Arts , France

  1977

• 

  the first living United States artist to be elected to Britain's Royal Academy

  Royal Academy of Arts , United Kingdom

  1980

• 

  National Academy of Design , United States

  May, 1945

• 

  American Academy of Arts and Sciences , United States

• 

  American Academy of Arts and Letters , United States

Connections

Andrew married Betsy James on May 15, 1940. Their marriage produced two sons — Nicholas Wyeth and James Browning Wyeth, a painter.

Andrew's wife Betsy had a great influence on his life. It was she, who introduced him to Christina Olson, who served as a model for his paintings.

Father:

Newell Converse Wyeth

Mother:

Carolyn (Bockius) Wyeth

child:

James Browning Wyeth

child:

Nicholas Wyeth

Wife:

Betsy James

References

• Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life This stunning and unique biography explores all the factors that have combined to create Andrew Wyeth — his childhood in a hothouse of creativity; his hypersensitivity; his formidable wife; his identification with people marginalized and misunderstood — all which have made him an American icon.
  1998
• Andrew Wyeth: Close Friends This unique publication chronicles seven decades of an underappreciated yet historically relevant aspect of Andrew's relationship to home and community.
  2001
• Art of Andrew Wyeth
  1973
• Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World and the Olson House This book presents rarely seen watercolors and drawings Andrew Wyeth, made of his friend Christina Olson, her brother Alvaro, and the weathered Maine farmstead, where they lived.
  2011
• Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures This book launched the celebrated exhibition seen by millions at museums around the world. It contains 194 illustrations, including 96 in full color.
  1987
• Andrew Wyeth: America's Painter
  1996
• Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic In examining his entire oeuvre, the book celebrates the artist's ongoing love affair with everyday life-domestic, natural, and architectural.
  2005