Andrew Wyeth
Birth Date: July 12, 1917
Death Date: January 16, 2009
Artist Gallery
A lighthouse, a beacon of hope, a warning of the rocky shoreline, a light for ships in the fog. Let us leave the light on for all wayward ships. Andrew Newell Wyeth is perhaps one of the most popular artists in this country’s history. Born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania in 1917 – Andrew is the youngest of five children of the well-known artist and illustrator Newell Convers Wyeth. Frail as a child, Andrew was educated at home rather than at school. In addition to conventional studies, Andrew received early on in life art training from his father. When Andrew was seven, New Mexico artist Peter Hurd came to Chadds Ford to study for two years with Newell Convers Wyeth. It was Hurd who taught Andrew the exacting egg tempera technique that Andrew would use later in life. At age twenty, Andrew has his first one-man exhibition at New York City’s Macbeth Gallery. This exhibition was comprised of watercolors inspired where the Wyeth family spent their summers in Maine. Within 24 hours, the show was a complete sellout. During the summer of 1941, Andrew was twenty-four years old and working in Maine. He had developed the habit of painting in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania in the winter months and around Cushing, Maine during the summer. Although he had been painting for several years in egg tempera, (Later his major medium), in 1941 he was known primarily as a watercolorist, an exciting medium mastered at such a young age. Andrew attributes much of his success to attitudes that he learned from father: “My father taught me remarkable things, but not only in the studio – just living with him…He gave me the appetite for looking deeper, made me see the depth of an object. He made me paint still life, and would say when you are doing that form and that shadow, remember it is not just a shadow. It is something that will never happen again just like that. Try to get the quality, that fleeing character of the thing”. Wyeth’s overall artistic style defies ready characterization. Some art critics have called him a “magic realist”, and Andrew himself has said that he’s more than a simple realist: “If you can combine realism and abstraction, you’ve got something terrific”.