Andrew Newell Wyeth (1917–2009) was one of the most famous American artists of the 20th century. Known as a realist painter, he was fond of saying “I paint my life,” and his work focused primarily on the people, animals, landscapes, and objects that filled the rural worlds of his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and his summer residence in Cushing, Maine.

Wyeth’s training started when he was young: He was home-schooled in art fundamentals by his father, the famed illustrator N.C. Wyeth. His early watercolors were successful, evoking the bravura technique of Winslow Homer’s coastal scenes. To take a path different from his father’s, Wyeth chose to specialize in tempera rather than oil painting. His temperas—including Christina’s World, one of the iconic works of American art—are marked by both an austerity and a melancholic quality. Although Wyeth acknowledged that he was a realist, he considered himself an abstractionist, and his paintings reflect contemplation, simplification, and the elimination of detail. 

Art historian Bonita Billman highlights works from Wyeth’s extraordinary oeuvre, which includes tonal drawings, watercolors, drybrush, and tempera paintings of sometimes-enigmatic landscapes, still lifes, and figures painted in rural Pennsylvania and coastal Maine. He painted the working poor of Chadds Ford and Cushing with empathy and honesty. His series of pictures of model Helga Testorf—painted in secret—comprise a major portion of his artistic production from 1971 to 1985. While Wyeth acknowledged few influences on his work, the larger-than-life presence and sudden death of his father resonated in his art for decades. 

Billman is retired from the department of art and art history at Georgetown University.

General Information

• View Common FAQs and Policies about our Online Programs on Zoom.