Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth was an American artist, born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Due to various health complications, Wyeth could not finish school in person, there he was homeschooled. His father, N. C. Wyeth was a successful painter and illustrator, whose work was published in many magazines and calendars. Therefore Andrew Wyeth was surrounded by creativity growing up, as four out of the five Wyeth children became artists . Wyeth’s father began to mentor him around the age of 15, teaching him the basic painting techniques and traditional rules. A lot of Wyeth’s inspiration came from his hometown, Chadds Ford, PA, and his summerhome Brandywine Valley Cushing, ME, illustrating their landscapes and portraits of the people who lived there in his preferred medium, watercolor.

He had his first solo exhibition that kick started his career, at Robert Macbeth’s gallery in New York in 1937 and every single painting was sold after only 2 days. In 1940, Wyeth married his wife Besty. Wyeth did not let his family life and his art cross paths, he would not let anyone watch anyone watch him paint as he once said “it would be like somebody watching you have sex - painting is that personal to me”. In 1945, Wyeth’s father was killed in a motor accident on railroad tracks. Wyeth’s landscapes became more somber as the scene of the accident became a reoccuring setting in his paintings. Therefore his work focus shifted more towards portraitures. He had a personal connection with all of his models as he felt it was important to put that emotion into his art. Wyeth went through periods of many different models, one of the most notable ones being Christina Oslen, the subject of one of his most famous works Christina’s World. Another notable model of Wyeth’s is Helga Testorf, a nurse for Wyeth’s neighbor in Chadds Ford. In secret, Wyeth created over 240 sketches and paintings of Helga. In 1986 the collection was made public, titled The Helga Pictures, exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. 

Wyeth received many accolades and reached high levels of success in his life as an artist. In 1963 he was the first artist to receive The Presidential Medal of Freedom from John F. Kennedy. In 1967, his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art broke an attendance record. From 1976-1977 he showcased Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: Kuerners and Olsons at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Wyeth passed away in 2009 but his works remains in these public collections for the art world to enjoy: The collections of most major American museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Palazzo Reale in Milan, and the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris, among many other museums.