The world lost a great American painter early Friday morning. Andrew Wyeth, who was 91, died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Wyeth was a Realist painter, using the surroundings of his lifetime homes in Chadds Ford and Cushing, Maine as inspiration. Besides the farms and landscapes of rural Pennsylvania, he also painted the figure. The most famous was the Helga series depicting in somber settings the Prussian immigrant whom Wyeth knew. This somberness often described his paintings, with their muted colors and bleak subjects.
His main medium was tempera, an egg-based paint rarely used by artists in favor of oils any more. This paint was better suited to his style as it creates a matte finish. Sometimes he would mix dirt with his paints to get just the right gray or dull colors. The paintings were highly detailed: each blade of grass, each strand of hair painstakingly portrayed. His second medium of choice was dry-brush watercolor, producing an entirely different effect- less detailed forest scenes or a creek with waterfall.
Wyeth enjoyed a long and successful career, though not without criticism as any prominent artist would know. Critics have called his art verging on illustration, and he has even been called a “Naive artist.” During his climb to fame in the mid-20th century, he forged his own way and shunned the ever-popular abstract styles his contemporaries preferred. Major museums around the country house Wyeth’s work, with the Brandywine River Museum in Chester County, PA housing one of the largest, along with his father N.C. Wyeth, and son Jamie Wyeth. He was awarded numerous awards, most recently being the National Medal of Arts in 2007.
“Helga Testorf.”
“Winter 1946.”
“Wind From The Sea.”
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