Artist. His mediums were primarily watercolor and egg tempera, and much of his work was done in browns and grays, giving a melancholy feel to his subjects. The son of illustrator N.C. Wyeth, he was home-schooled after contracting whooping cough. Talented from an early age, his father instructed him in drawing and painting, and Andrew Wyeth began painting watercolors of the coast and the sea near the family's summer home in Port Clyde, Maine, which were successfully exhibited at his first showing in 1937. In Maine he found the subject for "Christina's World," his best-known painting. In Chadds Ford he met his neighbor Helga Testorf, who became the subject of intimate portraits that brought him international public attention when he revealed that he had not told his wife about the 200 plus "Helga" paintings done between 1970 and 1985, many of them full-figure nudes, until he had completed them. As a representational artist, he is considered controversial because his paintings are in contrast to the abstraction movement that gained prominence in American art in the middle of the 20th century. Exhibitions of his work are extremely popular, though some critics remain unimpressed. The Helga collection was sold to a Japanese businessman in 1990 for between 40 and 50 million dollars, and a 2006 Wyeth retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art drew over 175,000 visitors, the highest attendance ever at the museum for a living artist. His sister Henriette (1907-1997) was a noteworthy artist, as is his son Jamie (born 1946). The Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, a converted 19th-century grist mill, includes hundreds of works by three generations of Wyeths.
Artist. His mediums were primarily watercolor and egg tempera, and much of his work was done in browns and grays, giving a melancholy feel to his subjects. The son of illustrator N.C. Wyeth, he was home-schooled after contracting whooping cough. Talented from an early age, his father instructed him in drawing and painting, and Andrew Wyeth began painting watercolors of the coast and the sea near the family's summer home in Port Clyde, Maine, which were successfully exhibited at his first showing in 1937. In Maine he found the subject for "Christina's World," his best-known painting. In Chadds Ford he met his neighbor Helga Testorf, who became the subject of intimate portraits that brought him international public attention when he revealed that he had not told his wife about the 200 plus "Helga" paintings done between 1970 and 1985, many of them full-figure nudes, until he had completed them. As a representational artist, he is considered controversial because his paintings are in contrast to the abstraction movement that gained prominence in American art in the middle of the 20th century. Exhibitions of his work are extremely popular, though some critics remain unimpressed. The Helga collection was sold to a Japanese businessman in 1990 for between 40 and 50 million dollars, and a 2006 Wyeth retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art drew over 175,000 visitors, the highest attendance ever at the museum for a living artist. His sister Henriette (1907-1997) was a noteworthy artist, as is his son Jamie (born 1946). The Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, a converted 19th-century grist mill, includes hundreds of works by three generations of Wyeths.
Bio by: Bill McKern
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