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ANDREW WYETH came close to being a child prodigy in art. Born at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, in 1917, he was given an early and thorough training by his father, the painter and illustrator N. C. Wyeth. At the age of twelve he did illustrations for the Brandywine Edition of Robin Hood and two years later for The Nub by Rob White. He was only twenty when he had his first one-man exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York, twenty-seven when he became an Academician. Married to Betsy Merle James, he lives quietly at Chadds Ford in a remodelled schoolhouse, spending his summers at Cushing, Maine.
These two places, where virtually all of Wyeth's life has been cast, are important to his work. Not only have they provided the subjects for his pictures but they have deeply colored his outlook, giving him something of their spare simplicity, an understanding of weatherbeaten things, of sun and air and of the underlying tragedy in hard and lonely lives. The microscopically realist style which Wyeth has mastered in his tempera paintings has been a direct response to his love of these places and their people. It is never used to dazzle nor for the sheer joy of imitation. It is a tool for mirroring, as flawlessly as possible, the subtle moods and restrained drama of his chosen themes. His pictures are often symbolic in feeling but the symbolism is essentially pictorial, not literary and seldom explicit.
The cruel hooks over Karl's head are a vital part of an unusual design; whatever else they may mean is left to the beholder. The dramatic contrast between the crippled Christina Olson and the sunlit field through which she crawls has its bleak poetry, susceptible of many interpretations. Even Wyeth's unpeopled landscapes are filled with their own distinctive moods, wrought by an incredibly skillful manipulation of light, perspective, textures and subdued color harmonies. There is no doubt that the artist has been strongly influenced by both the sharp focus and unconventional angles of modern photography but he has transformed them into a painter's terms and used them, with the other means of his craft, to create an emotionally rich record of American back country.
Wyeth: Time is valuable to me. It will allow me to absorb the techniques of the mediums in which I work. In order to express in truth the basic facts of the world I behold, I hope to have digested the means of expressing it so thoroughly that the object or subject painted will become the all important thing.
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