Baterbys Art Auction Gallery

Press Upcoming Live Auctions Past Live Auctions Online Auctions Charity Partners Benefit Events Auctioneer Services Art Lectures Art Consignment Art Appraisals Home Staging Catalogs Artist Books Artist Biographies Artist Spotlight Art Terms Art Blog
		At a time in art when abstraction and modern ideals were all the rage Andrew Wyeth was a rebel. Much of Wyeth's rebelliousness against art culture in his time was due to early influences from his father, N.C. Wyeth. N.C. Wyeth was a famous illustrator whose drawings for books such as Treasure Island, Robin Hood, and The Legends of King Arthur are well known. Andrew was trained by his father from an early age. At fourteen Andrew's father would take him into his studio and teach him in drawing and construction; Wyeth's career began with technical equipment that most artists acquire after years of study. By the 1920's Andrew's father was famous with other celebrities like writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mary Pickford. In this atmosphere of culture and art, popularity, success and fame as well as an appreciation for realism Andrew's future was shaped.

His whole life from infancy was spent in the countryside of Maine and Pennsylvania, and these states were the central inspirations for his art. The country life pervades his works: the cycle of seasons, nature, people, farmhouses, barns, tools, wagons and plows all make their way into Wyeth's life and art. The old fieldstone buildings of Pennsylvania , the unpainted wooden houses of New England, the constant saltiness, sea and fog of Maine unite under Wyeth's brush. Whatever theme chosen, Wyeth's pieces contain a simplicity, concentrating on a single image.

Since Andrew's past was steeped in a realist type of art, his works were standing out in the late 1940's abstract art movement. He split hairs in the debates about the nature of modern art. New York Times writer Michael Kimmelman wrote an article on the death of Wyeth (at age 91) in January of 2009 stating, " Wyeth split public opinion as vigorously as, and probably even more so than, any other American painter including the other modern Andy Warhol, whose milieu was as urban as Wyeth’s was rural."

Wyeth, like Warhol, received much criticism for his works. His realist style was scrutinized but Wyeth's work contained a mechanical and unremarkable kind of realism that was distinctive if only for going against the rising tide of abstraction in America. Yet, this did not prevent Wyeth's rising fame and recognition. In 1949 Winston Churchill asked for Wyeth watercolors to decorate his room at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. Harvard gave Wyeth an honorary degree in 1955. He made the cover of Time in 1963 when President Johnson gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He painted portraits of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon. A show of his work toured the country in 1966 and 1967, attracting huge crowds at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Whitney Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylvania opened in 1971, its main attraction a collection of Wyeth's, donated by Mrs. Wyeth. In 1976, Wyeth was given a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum.

Wyeth's pieces are also featured at Baterbys Art Auction Gallery. The value of his works, icons of American history and culture, can be seen online and in our gallery. Baterbys appreciates Andrew Wyeth's paintings. As Wyeth himself said, “Oftentimes people will like a picture I paint because it’s maybe the sun hitting on the side of a window and they can enjoy it purely for itself, It reminds them of some afternoon. But for me, behind that picture could be a night of moonlight when I’ve been in some house in Maine, a night of some terrible tension, or I had this strange mood. Maybe it was Halloween. It’s all there, hiding behind the realistic side.”

Baterbys Art Auction Gallery features some of his most notable pieces.