Artist of the day: Artist of the day, January 29: Andrew Wyeth, American painter

Monday, January 29, 2018

Artist of the day, January 29: Andrew Wyeth, American painter

Andrew Newell Wyeth (1917– 2009) was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century.

Andrew Wyeth received tutelage from his artist father and garnered fame for his own works, taking to egg tempera techniques. He became an internationally exhibited, award-winning artist.

Andrew Newell Wyeth III was the youngest of five siblings had by father N.C. Wyeth, the famed illustrator. N.C. was a major, sometimes frightening presence in the household who guided his son's artistic talents and skill.

Andrew, who would do earlier work submitted under his father's name, took to painting using regular watercolor and dry-brush watercolor techniques, eventually adopting the tempera method. In 1936, Anrdew Wyeth had his first showing at the Art Alliance of Philadelphia; the following year, he had his debut one-man show at New York City's Macbeth Galley, where all of the pieces were immediately sold.

Wyeth wed Betsey James at the start of the new decade. Fusing personal and professional worlds, she would become his business manager and take an active interest in shaping his public image.

Wyeth garnered major acclaim with his 1948 piece, "Christina's World," showcasing a friend of Betsey's who had been stricken with polio making her way across a field without a wheelchair. He became known for both vivid landscapes and portraiture, sometimes fusing the two.

Nonetheless, exhibitions of his art, which were shown internationally, often brought in record numbers of museum visitors. Wyeth also went on to receive many honors. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and later received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990 from President George H.W. Bush, the first artist to receive the award.

In 1986, it was revealed that Wyeth had been painting more than 200 clothed and nude portraits of German neighbor Helga Testorff over the past decade and a half. The works were the subject of a Time magazine cover and would be shown in Washington, D.C., at the National Gallery of Art, eventually being sold for millions to an art aficionado from Japan.

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