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ANDREW WYETH: July 12, 1917 – Jan. 16, 2009

January 21, 2009 - Andrew Wyeth, America's foremost realist painter, spent his youth puttering around in skiffs at Port Clyde, making friends with local fishermen and learning his way on the water.

As he developed his skills as an artist, he populated his paintings with nostalgic and oftentimes moody images of the coastal landscape that he fell in love with as a youngster.

On a blustery winter morning Friday that could have served as the background for one of those paintings, Wyeth died in his sleep at his home in Chadds Ford, Pa., in the presence of his wife, Betsy, and their two children. He was 91.

Around Maine and around the world, friends, colleagues, admirers, scholars and politicians remembered Wyeth as one of the 20th century's finest realist painters, a man who translated his passion for Maine into watercolor and egg tempera paintings that formed an indelible image of the state for an international audience.

He spent every summer of his life but one in Maine.

"Maine is a very different world than Chadds Ford, but Andy sure did love it here," said photographer Peter Ralston, a longtime family friend and Wyeth confidante. "Andy didn't travel far and experiment or dabble in all sorts of far-fetched things. He just went deep, and absolutely had Maine in his blood.

"Andy painted his whole life, and all facets of his life. The big themes in his work run deep and are lifelong."

In a 2005 interview with the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, Wyeth had a simple explanation for his art.

"I paint the things that emotionally mean a lot to me," Wyeth said. "One goes as far as one's heart takes him. Anything else to me is just a technical trick."

Wyeth spent nearly his entire life in Pennsylvania and Maine. He was born in Chadds Ford in 1917, the youngest of five children of N.C. and Carolyn Wyeth. His father was an illustrator who introduced Wyeth to art at a young age. He was home-schooled, and learned the arts and humanities from his father – knowledge that Wyeth later passed on to one of his sons, the Maine-based painter Jamie Wyeth.

Wyeth is also survived by another son, art dealer Nicholas Wyeth of Cushing, and a granddaughter.

Wyeth flourished in art and had his first solo exhibition at a New York gallery in 1937, at age 20. He sold every painting at that show.

Wyeth made his most famous painting in Cushing in 1948. "Christina's World" shows a neighbor, Christina Olson, crouched and almost crawling along the lawn of her family home. Wyeth never lets the viewer see her face, but manages to convey the struggle of the degenerative muscle disease that keeps her from walking.

It's that subtext in all his work – the untold story that hovers beneath the surface of his paintings – that distinguishes Wyeth from many other realist painters, said art historian John Wilmerding of Princeton University.

"It's that mysterious area of content that is his long-lasting gift," said Wilmerding, who owns a summer home in Maine. "There is no getting around the fact that he is one of the quintessential realists. I guess I would view Wyeth as the archetype of American realism for our time."

SHRUGGED OFF ART WORLD TRENDS

What makes his accomplishments remarkable is the fact that he completed his most lasting work during the height of America's love affair with abstract expressionism. Although he remained popular, the art establishment viewed him with disdain in midcentury, because of his embrace of the landscape motif.

"In an era that was all about abstraction, he refocused public attention on realism, narrative, landscape and the figure," said Thomas Denenberg, chief curator and acting director of the Portland Museum of Art, which owns nine of his works. "He is the great painter of the narrative tradition of the 20th century.

"People's vision of the American landscape is Wyeth in Maine and Pennsylvania. Our 20th-century worldview is through Andrew Wyeth's eyes, and the fact that he was doing that against the grain of the '40s, '50s and '60s is just amazing."

Wyeth reached the height of his popularity in the 1960s and '70s. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine on Dec. 27, 1963, the same year that President Kennedy nominated him for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1967, his exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art broke attendance records, and in 1976 he became the first native-born living American with a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 1990, he became the first artist to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.

More recently, he received lifetime achievement recognition from the Maine College of Art in Portland and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. In his later years, his work also was the subject of a major retrospective, organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Throughout his career, Wyeth maintained deep connections with Maine museums and the Maine art establishment. The Farnsworth gave Wyeth his first solo museum show, in 1951, and later established the Wyeth Study Center. To this day, his paintings form the cornerstone of the Farnsworth collection and its identity.

In 1997, the Portland Museum of Art mounted "Andrew Wyeth at 80: A Celebration."

Wyeth was a frequent visitor to both museums. He sometimes showed up unannounced, surprising curators and other visitors.

Daniel E. O'Leary, former director of the Portland Museum of Art, knew Wyeth through the artist's visits.

"He was really one of the most genuinely sincere and unspoiled people I have ever been in the same room with. He just radiated a quality of uniqueness and genius, really," O'Leary said.

"When he came to the museum in '97 for that show, we went over to the Cumberland Club. We had lunch. Andy had crab cakes, and he loved them. From that day on, whenever I went to the Cumberland Club with a guest, I'd always like to say, 'Andrew Wyeth highly recommends the crab cakes.' Every time I did it, I saw Andy in my mind, with his wonderful gentle expression."

O'Leary entertained Wyeth again three years later, when the artist came to the museum to view a show of his father's work. This time the museum employed an extra security guard to keep people at bay, so Wyeth could view his father's paintings in the quiet company of his wife and family.

At one point, a woman slipped past security.

"She said, 'Sir, I know I am not supposed to bother you, but would you mind telling what your favorite painting is?' Andy took her by the hand and led her to a gorgeous painting by his father, 'Black Spruce Ledge,' and said, 'I think it's this one.' He was just glorious with her."

BOTH 'INTENTIONALLY PRIVATE,' SOCIABLE

Dahlov Ipcar, a Georgetown painter, didn't know Wyeth personally, but they moved in the same circles. She, too, is 91, and was saddened to hear of his death.

"He was quite a marvelous painter," Ipcar said. "He had that strange combination of realism and nostalgia."

One of her favorite Wyeth paintings is "Master Bedroom," which shows a dog sleeping soundly in a ball at the head of a well-made four-poster bed. One of Wyeth's most popular paintings, it is widely reproduced as a print.

Ipcar likes the warmth of the painting.

"I think if anybody decided to back a realist and allow one realist to become famous, he was a good choice," she said.

In a statement, Democratic Maine Gov. John Baldacci said: "My heart goes out to the Wyeth family, and I join with the millions of fans of Andrew Wyeth to mourn the loss of such a talented artist. I've known Andrew Wyeth's son, Jamie, for a number of years, and have the highest regard for the accomplishments of the entire Wyeth family, three generations of which have contributed to the art world."

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said, "His keen eye and steady hand created some of the best American paintings of our time. He was an inspiration to a new generation of artists as well, including son Jamie."

Wyeth was known as a recluse, though those who knew him best say that reputation was undeserved. Wyeth was fiercely protective of his privacy and of his family, and sometimes distrustful of the media, Ralston said.

But that did not mean that Wyeth avoided people. He would often show up for lunch at cafes in Port Clyde or Thomaston, friends said.

He had controversial moments in his life, particularly in the 1980s, when it was revealed that he had for years secretly painted nude portraits of a female neighbor. The news created a stir.

Ralston said the artist purposefully kept much of his life under wraps. He had a hand-lettered sign on his studio door in Port Clyde, warning off intruders: "NOTICE: If it is the second coming of Christ, call me out. Otherwise, let me alone."

"There have always been secrets and there has always been a certain amount of intrigue about certain aspects of his life," Ralston said. "And yet, I have never met anybody in my life who enjoyed good times and good friends more than Andy and Betsy. He was intentionally private and incredibly disciplined, and he had to be both to achieve what he did."

Another friend, Wiscasset High School teacher Thomas Block, said Wyeth used to visit Block's art classes when he taught at Georges Valley High School in Thomaston, near Wyeth's midcoast home.

"He might only stay for a half-hour or so, but he would talk to the kids about art. It was almost like he was holding court, sitting in a chair at the head of the class," Block said. "Students would bring him their drawings, and he would critique them. 'Oh, that's pretty good, but you should try doing this.' He loved talking to the kids."

Three years ago, long after Block had left Georges Valley for Wiscasset, he happened on Wyeth at the Farnsworth. "I approached him and said, 'Do you remember me?' He immediately said, 'Oh, yes, you're the art teacher.'"

COMMITMENT TO MAINE'S COAST

In Maine, Wyeth's universe centered on the midcoast communities of Cushing, where he lived for many years, and Port Clyde, a village in the town of St. George, where he spent his later years. The Wyeths own several islands off Port Clyde. The islands and the Wyeths' mainland properties form the backbone of many, if not most, of his Maine-based paintings.

Ralston said that both Andrew and Betsy Wyeth were committed to preserving Maine's coastal heritage. The Wyeths were instrumental in forming the Island Institute in 1983, an organization for which Ralston serves as executive vice president.

At one of their islands, the Wyeths granted local fishermen permanent berths to help the industry.

"They saw that the endangered entity of the coast of Maine was not spruce-covered islands, but dwindling working waterfronts. They did something about it before anybody else. Betsy and Andy were on it from the very beginning," Ralston said.

In his 2005 interview with the newspaper, Wyeth said he hoped to be remembered for the ability to paint what he felt – "that I tried to put down the feeling of the objects that meant a great deal to me, put them down as clearly and as naturally as possible."

"Once in a while, I think I hit a certain quality," he said. "Time will tell."

Ralston has no doubt that history will treat Wyeth kindly, and that his work would not have achieved that "certain quality" if not for the peace and sense of sanctuary that Wyeth felt in Maine.

"The islands lend themselves to the kind of privacy you need to paint like there is no tomorrow, which is what Andy has always done," Ralston said. "There are no tomorrows for Andy. But God almighty, look at the work he left behind."

By BOB KEYES, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, January 17, 2009


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