
Andrew Wyeth(1917-2009)Untitled 14 x 20in
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Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)
signed 'A. Wyeth' (lower right)
watercolor and pencil on paper
14 x 20in
Executed in 1972.
Footnotes
Provenance
The artist.
Leonard B. Andrews, Malvern, Pennsylvania, 1986.
AM Art, Inc., Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, 1989.
Pacific Sun Trading Company, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 2005.
Private collection, North Carolina.
Gift to the present owner, 2006.
Exhibited
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, and elsewhere, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures, May 24, 1987-December 16, 1990, p. 192, no. 235, illustrated (also in translated publication, Tokyo, Japan, 1987).
West Palm Beach, Florida, Norton Museum of Art, and elsewhere, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures, January 13, 1996-June 29, 1997.
Naples, Florida, Naples Museum of Art, Andrew Wyeth and Family, January 21-May 14, 2006.
This watercolor will be included in Betsy James Wyeth's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.
Andrew Wyeth first met the model Helga Testorf at the Kuerner family's home, and as the artist himself remembers, he was enamored. "I was entranced the instant I saw her. I thought she was the personification of all young Prussian girls . . . Amazingly blond, fit, compassionate. I was totally fascinated by her." (T. Hoving, "The Horse's Mouth," Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper, New York, 2006, p. 14-13.) With little persuasion, Helga agreed to sit for the artist. This was the beginning of a long relationship, one of great admiration and purpose.
In a departure from the familiar nude portraits of Helga, the present work shows her in a uniform of winter layers and fur hat. She stares out the window at the world beyond. To the viewer the untouched, white sheet of paper visible at left beyond her gaze, takes shape as an open farmhouse window that allows the crisp winter air into their dwelling. This area of exposed sheet, a gaping negative space in the composition, manages to still illuminate the figure's face like a spotlight of pure, white light washing over her fair features. The earthy brown and soft green pallet that Wyeth assigns to many of his Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, watercolors is present here and Helga seamlessly blends with the natural wooden structure that encloses her.
It is in each of the varied portraits of Helga, we see the affection he felt for his favorite model, when interviewed by Thomas Hoving the artist recalled, "they weren't paintings to me but attempts to discover something about this lady. They were a complex mental process." (T. Hoving, "The Helga Series," Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper, New York, 2006, p. 15)
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