Beech Tree

Provenance

The artist

Private collection, acquired from above, 1948

Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, New York, April 16, 2014, lot 112

Private collection

Avery Galleries, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

Related Works

Christmas Card, watercolor on cardboard, 3⅜ x 5¼ inches; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware

Pennsylvania Winter, 1947, watercolor on paper, 22⅝ x 31 inches; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware

Note: This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work by Betsy James Wyeth.

Thought to have been completed when the artist was only seventeen years old, this work marks an early attention to watercolor. Later speaking on the medium, Andrew Wyeth expressed, “The only virtue to a watercolor is to put down an idea very quickly without too much thought about what you feel at the moment. In some senses it is similar to drawing but drawing in all aspects of color. With watercolor, you can pick up the atmosphere, the temperature, the sound,” continuing, “watercolor perfectly expresses the free side of my nature.”_[1]

_[1] Andrew Wyeth, interview with Thomas Hoving, quoted in Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976), 33.