Andrew Wyeth Biography

Andrew Newell Wyeth’s 1948 painting Christina’s World is one of the most recognized American paintings of the 20th century. Wyeth, the youngest son of noted illustrator N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), grew up in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and on the coast of Maine, and began painting at an early age. He had his first one-man show in New York in 1937 and has had a successful painting career ever since. A realist who paints portraits and scenes of Americana in water color and egg tempera, Wyeth became one of the nation’s most popular and celebrated artists by the 1970s. Though Wyeth shuns public attention, he made headlines in 1986 with the revelation that he’d secretly done nearly 250 paintings (1971-85) of a family acquaintance, Helga Testorf (The Helga Pictures). His many paintings include The Trodden Weed (1951), Tenant Farmer (1961), April Wind (1952) and Indian Summer (1970).