Andrew Wyeth’s desolate landscapes and somber portraits often convey a dreamy feeling, but none so much as the “The Snowhill,” which uses painter’s license, characters, and symbolism as if they form a snapshot straight from a dream.
No faces visible, a strange inexplicable shadow cast on the foreground, the usual muted colors of Wyeth’s palette all help to create a slight uneasiness, despite the apparent joy of the subject. Though faceless, this bunch has an identity to the author, even though they may have never met each other all at once as we see here, and certainly not dancing on a maypole.
They may as well be from a dream, because they are from the artist’s past. Each one is a former model who sat painstakingly for countless hours to be part of his canvasses. Helga Testorf, Karl Kuerner, Anna Kuerner, Allan Lynch, Bill Loper and Adam Johnson have all appeared in numerous paintings. It’s the Kuerner’s farm we see in the distance on the left, a place which has served as invaluable inspiration for Wyeth. The Keurners were German immigrants whom he met near his Pennsylvania home when he was a boy; Karl served in the German army in WWI, who is of course dressed in uniform in the painting.
Beside not being an actual landscape (the Kuerner farm would have been wooded near the house), there is one part of the composition which is there solely as a symbol- the tracks. N. C. Wyeth, Andrew’s father was killed by a train. According to the painter, the maypole dancing former models of his are dancing in anticipation of his death, because of the stress he had inflicted on them while they posed.
Wyeth is one of the great American landscape and realist painters, but this excellent painting borders on the surreal.
