Chilly mid-January will bring the 14th anniversary of the death of Andrew Wyeth.
Books and exhibitions continue to appear, celebrating the career of our most famous local artist, whose life of 91 years both began and ended in the quiet hamlet of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, just 2 miles north of Delaware.
Here, he produced nearly all of his thousands of tempera and watercolor paintings, except for those done during summer visits to Maine. Andrew Wyeth left us an extraordinary record of bygone rural life along the Brandywine.
And yet, this most familiar artist, beloved by millions, turns out to have been mysterious and even baffling, as I discovered in researching my new book, “Artists of Wyeth Country: Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth.”
Living in the jet age, Andrew Wyeth showed virtually no interest in traveling, nor in visiting the great museums of Europe. Instead, he burrowed down into wintry Chadds Ford like a mouse in a cozy teacup.
Inhabiting a megalopolis near the great urban centers of Philadelphia and New York, he turned his back on their vibrant art scenes and focused entirely on his personal obsessions along the Brandywine: old sycamore trees, dilapidated farmsteads, a scruffy young bull.
America fell in love with Andrew Wyeth in the 1950s and 1960s, as his paintings captured ways of life fast disappearing and as suburban houses and interstates buried historic farmland. Journalists longed to meet him and splash his pictures across the pages of glossy magazines.
Such media attention was an opportunity afforded to very few artists — and yet, Wyeth’s protective business-manager wife, Betsy, often forbade journalists to contact him. Her initial reaction to Life magazine’s request for an interview was, “Kill the story.”
One well-meaning journalist was denied a coveted interview for 35 years.
This habit of extreme protectiveness still exists today, although Betsy died in 2020 at age 98. After three years of research, I was required to submit the manuscript of my book to the Wyeth office for inspection, just weeks before its publication by a university press. Upon reviewing it, they forbade me to show any Andrew Wyeth art in my book whatsoever.
Thus, you will not find the beloved painting “Christina’s World” in the pages of my book. You can, however, readily buy a framed print of it at Lowe’s or The Home Depot.
The wall of protection was erected very high in Chadds Ford. Neighbors who knew Wyeth still refuse to talk to journalists about their illustrious friend, almost seeming to forget that he is no longer around. And yet, a few are, increasingly, willing to share recollections, which some industrious local historian ought to record before memories fade.
Most everyone agrees that “Andy” was personally delightful: eager to chat, roaring with laughter in his high-pitched cackle. But not everyone enjoyed his ribald humor nor found his loquacious stories entirely plausible. Biographers have sometimes swallowed them uncritically.
Toward strangers eager to meet him, he could be alternately welcoming or cagey, sometimes claiming he wasn’t Andrew Wyeth at all. He would not tolerate being watched while he painted in the Brandywine countryside. His artistic method demanded that he be completely alone, seeking a “flash impression” from nature that would ignite his artistic urge.
Wyeth loved to dine out, most famously at Hank’s Place in Chadds Ford, that quaint eatery totaled in a 2021 flood and now being rebuilt. In the midst of pouring coffee, astonished waitresses might be invited to come model for him — a heady thought, since his model Helga Testorf had graced the cover of Time and Newsweek magazines in the 1980s.
A misconception about Andrew Wyeth is that he belongs exclusively to Pennsylvania (as well as coastal Maine). In fact, his Delaware connections ran deep. His artistic hero, frequently emulated, was Wilmington’s Howard Pyle. I have discovered many unnoticed echoes of Pyle illustrations in Andrew Wyeth works.
Andy’s father, N.C. Wyeth, married a young lady from Wilmington, and their first home still stands at 1331 Shallcross, near his former studio, today called Schoonover Studios.
Although N.C. soon moved to Chadds Ford, where Andrew Wyeth was born in 1917, he returned to Wilmington to buy his art supplies at Hardcastle Gallery downtown. Andy was a regular at this old-timey establishment as well, which eventually moved to Centreville and, later, Bear.
After N.C. died in a freak car accident in 1945, a grieving Andrew organized a memorial exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum.
Wilmington was the home of important patrons, too, the immense wealth of du Ponts and others playing a useful role in Andrew Wyeth’s rocketlike career ascent.
Henry Francis du Pont had Wyeth paint his portrait on the Winterthur stairs and purchased “Groundhog Day” for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a magnificent picture that millions of visitors have viewed over the past six decades — although I was forbidden to show it to readers of my scholarly book.
Andrew Wyeth’s last Brandywine Valley painting features not Chadds Ford but Wilmington, where, coming home from the eye doctor in 2008, he experienced one of those “flash impressions.” The gateposts and traffic lights at Nemours Children’s Health appear behind the motorcyclist in the picture “Stop!”
As so often, Wyeth blocked traffic when he pulled his truck to the side of the road to paint. A policeman who responded was astonished to find the legendary artist and his endlessly patient companion, Helga, both sitting nonchalantly in folding chairs beside the busy street.
Did you ever meet Andrew Wyeth? If so, I’d like to hear from you. Interviews have helped me build up a clearer picture of America’s beloved artist, whose true nature has often been cloaked in mystery.
