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Andrew Wyeth: Master Drawings from the Artist's Collection
I love the quality of pencil. It helps me to get to the core of a thing, and it doesnt compete with painting. With pencil I can study things in detailit gives me the architectural structurebut the color stays like a dream in the back of my mind until I come to paint.1
- Andrew Wyeth
(February 2006, #012)
For Immediate Release
CHADDS FORD, PA—Andrew Wyeth's extraordinary skill as a draftsman is the primary subject of a new exhibition at the Brandywine River Museum. Andrew Wyeth: Master Drawings from the Artists Collection features approximately 40 works on paper created over more than five decades—from 1951 to 2005—and ranging from portraits of family members and friends to vibrant depictions of objects, landscapes and buildings in and around the artist's homes in Pennsylvania and Maine. This is the first detailed examination of drawings by Andrew Wyeth since 1963 when a collection of his works opened at Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum and traveled to three other museums.
"Wyeth captures tonal values almost perfectly," writes Professor Henry Adams in the extensive catalogue that accompanies the exhibition. Contours, outlines, textures, light and shade are documented with near-perfect precision. According to Adams, "Every substance he portrays is understood. He has grasped that in real life shadows are not smooth and uniform in tone but contain reflected highlights."
Boots, Study for Trodden Weed (1951) is a remarkable demonstration of Wyeth's technical virtuosity. Viewers can immediately recognize his mastery of crosshatching to create an almost sculptural depiction of the artist walking in tall boots. Adams comments, "Every little line and fleck represents a response to that particular square inch of the object. Indeed, in some peculiar way the slightly unpredictable wiggles in the lines serve not only to indicate contour and shadow but also to evoke the distinctive linear patterns of the cracking old leather."
In addition to revealing Wyeth's superb technical ability, his drawings offer exciting and valuable insight into his creative process. Through the drawings, "We begin to understand his motivation; we believe we see the past, the moment when an object, person, or scene became extraordinarily compelling to him," remarks Brandywine River Museum Director James H. Duff in the Preface to the catalogue.
Such insight is evident, for example, in Monologue, Study (1965), a portrait of Wyeth's friend Willard Snowden who, as Wyeth stated, "talked all the time he was sitting."2 As he posed, Snowden regaled Wyeth with his adventures as a sailor and drifter. Wyeth was intrigued by "the courtliness of his speech, which had the quality of a college professor's," explains Adams. "The treatment could hardly be more direct, but this very simplicity encourages us to focus on details that otherwise might escape us. Wyeth tends to use this approach particularly when he wants to create an effect of psychological intimacy."
While many of the drawings are preliminary to well-known paintings—and while Andrew Wyeth is known primarily for his work in tempera, watercolor and drybrush—these remarkable drawings offer unique opportunities for contemplation and pleasure; their beauty derives from exceptional techniques described in Professor Adams' essay.
Andrew Wyeth: Master Drawings from the Artists Collection is organized by the Brandywine River Museum and appears concurrently with Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (March 29 through July 16). The exhibition catalogue is available for sale in the Brandywine River Museum Shop (610-388-8326) and online at www.brandywinemuseumshop.org.
Located on U.S. Route 1 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the Brandywine River Museum is open daily, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., except Christmas Day. Admission is $8 for adults; $5 for seniors ages 65 and over, students with I.D., and children; and free for children under six and Brandywine Conservancy members. For more information, call 610-388-2700 or visit the museum's website at www.brandywinemuseum.org.
For digital images to accompany this press release, please contact
Jennifer Maguire at jmaguire@brandywine.org or 610-388-8337.
1 E.P. Richardson, Andrew Wyeths Painting Techniques, in Wanda Corn et al., The Art of Andrew Wyeth {exh. cat., The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco} (Greenwich, Conn., 1973), 86.
2 Andrew Wyeth, Editors Letters, Art News (May 1952), 6.
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