Essay
Provenance
The artist
Private collection, acquired directly from the artist
Related Work
Andrew Wyeth, Backwater, 1982, watercolor on paper, 20 ¼ x 28 inches, signed lower left. Whereabouts unknown
Andrew Wyeth, Untitled (Backwater Study), 1982. Whereabouts unknown
Andrew Wyeth, Backwater (Study), 1982. Whereabouts unknown[i]
Note: This watercolor will be included in Betsy James Wyeth’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work. The depicted scene is thought to be of the back road to Tenants Harbor in Maine.
Landscape as an independent subject or as a dominant element has prevailed in his art for six decades. Wyeth’s landscapes cut across time, place, genre, and technique; landscape, in fact, underlies all his work.—Adam D. Weinberg, curator, 1998[ii]
He has always viewed watercolor as much more than a mere collection of studies or a thread that connects his work in tempera. Watercolor became for him a method of seeing and thinking about an object or scene.—Beth Venn, curator, 1998[iii]
Wyeth’s watercolors have always had the boldness of treatment, bravura of handling and decorative effect of the tradition of Winslow Homer . . . Wyeth never loses the essential spontaneity of approach and manner inherent in watercolor.—Samuel M. Green, art historian, 1951[iv]
Capturing Intangible Essences While Andrew Wyeth has long been renowned for tempera paintings, his watercolors have only recently begun to attract scholarly attention. Wyeth typically turned to watercolor as a way to become familiar with his subjects, noting, “with watercolor, you can pick up the atmosphere, the temperature, the sound . . . watercolor perfectly expresses the free side of my nature.”[v] Indeed, the “free side” of Wyeth’s nature is readily apparent in his watercolors, which often contain loose brushstrokes that serve as suggestions, rather than reproductions, of reality. Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, best explained the uniqueness of Wyeth’s watercolors: “Unlike work in his other realistic styles, Wyeth’s expressionist paintings only exist in one medium, watercolor. . . . They disclose how the artist’s sensibility, skill, and knowledge of materials are so highly developed that he can capture intangible essences: the character of light (and darkness), the effect of space and, most of all, the sensation of the land itself.”[vi]
AGR
Andrew Wyeth’s work is housed in the Museum of Modern Art, Dallas Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Brandywine River Museum.
1 All related works illustrated in Beth Venn and Adam D. Weinberg, Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998), p. 44, nos. 29, 30, and 31; p. 171, no. 139.
[ii] Adam D. Weinberg, “Terra Incognita: Redefining Wyeth’s World,” in Venn and Weinberg, p. 19.
[iii] Beth Venn, “Process of Invention: The Watercolors of Andrew Wyeth,” in Venn and Weinberg, p. 47.
[iv] Samuel M. Green, “Introduction,” in Paintings and Drawings by Andrew Wyeth (Portland, Maine: The Anthoensen Press, 1951), p. 9.
[v] Andrew Wyeth, interview with Thomas Hoving, quoted in Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976), p. 33.
[vi] Weinberg, “Terra Incognita: Redefining Wyeth’s World,” p. 32.