Wyeth, Andrew (
b Chadds Ford, Pa., 12 July 1917). American painter, son and pupil of a well-known muralist and illustrator of children's books,
Newell Convers Wyeth (1882–1945). Wyeth's work consists almost entirely of depictions of the people and places of the two areas he knows best—the Brandywine Valley around his native Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and the area near Cushing, Maine, where he has his summer home. He usually paints in watercolour or
tempera with a precise and detailed technique, and often he conveys a sense of loneliness or nostalgia (trappings of the modern world, such as motor cars, rarely appear in his work). He became famous with
Christina's World (1948), which was bought by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1949 and has became one of the best-known images in American art. It depicts a friend of the artist, Christina Olson, who had been so badly crippled by polio that she moved by dragging herself with her arms. She is shown in a field on her farm in Maine, ‘pulling herself slowly back towards the house’. The unusual viewpoint and the heavily charged atmosphere are typical of Wyeth's work. Because Christina is seen from the back, some viewers assumed that she was an attractive young girl frolicking in the grass, and were shocked when they saw Wyeth's portraits of the gaunt, middle-aged figure. Many other viewers, however, saw in it a deeper significance as a symbol of the human condition.
Building on the picture's fame, Wyeth has gone on to have an enormously successful career. However, critical opinion on him is widely divided: J. Carter Brown, director of the National Gallery in Washington, called him ‘a great master’, whereas Professor Sam Hunter, one of the leading authorities on 20th-century American art, has written: ‘What most appeals to the public, one must conclude, apart from Wyeth's conspicuous virtuosity, is the artist's banality of imagination and lack of pictorial ambition. He comfortably fits the commonsense ethos and non-heroic mood of today's popular culture, despite his occasional lapses into gloomy introspection.’ Wyeth himself explained his popularity by saying, ‘It's because I happen to paint things that reflect the basic truths of life: sky, earth, friends, the intimate things.’
