RIP:
Two of Wyeth's subjects captured wide
attention. In 1948 he completed "Christina's World," which many critics
and admirers consider his most enduring work. In it, dark-haired
Christina Olson, a crippled woman who was Wyeth's neighbor in Maine,
crawls through tawny grass toward a weathered farmhouse. The technical
virtuosity of the painting and the haunting loneliness that the scene
invokes, have proved to be hallmarks of Wyeth's style. It is now in the
permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
More than 30 years later, Wyeth attracted a different kind of attention
when his several hundred paintings and drawings of Helga Testorf, many
of them nudes, were first displayed. The large number of works and the
palpable charge that runs through them suggest more than a simple
artist-and-model rapport. The unveiling led to magazine cover stories,
a traveling exhibition and careful explanations by Wyeth about his
relationship with Testorf.
Throughout his career of more than seven decades, Wyeth remained a
figurative painter who prospered even in times when the genre was
considered passe. He was tapped to paint the official portrait of
President Eisenhower and became a favorite of President Nixon, who
hosted a dinner for Wyeth at the White House in 1970 when an exhibit of
his work went on exhibit there. Nixon toasted Wyeth as an artist whose
"painting has caught the heart of America" and added that "certainly
tonight the heart of America belongs to Andrew Wyeth."