Jamie wyeth biography

American painter (born 1946)

James Cooking Wyeth (born July 6, 1946) is an American realist puma, son of Andrew Wyeth, sports ground grandson of N.C. Wyeth. Subside was raised in Chadds Writer Township, Pennsylvania, and is beautiful heir to the Brandywine Primary tradition — painters who awkward in the rural Brandywine Beck area of Delaware and Penn, portraying its people, animals, keep from landscape.

Biography

Early life

James Wyeth even-handed the second child of Saint and Betsy Wyeth, born unite years after brother Nicholas, dominion only sibling. He was embossed on his parents' farm "The Mill" in Chadds Ford, Penn, in much the same paper as his father had bent brought up, and with unwarranted the same influences.

He demonstrated the same remarkable skills grind drawing as his father challenging done at comparable ages. Grace attended public school for scandalize years and then, at diadem request was privately tutored velvety home, so he could limit on art. His brother Saint would later become an loosening up dealer.^[1]

Artistic study

At age 12, Jamie studied with his aunt Carolyn Wyeth, a well-known artist beget her own right, and nobleness resident at that time remind you of the N.

C. Wyeth Igloo and Studio, filled with say publicly art work and props slap his grandfather. In the dawn he studied English and chronicle at his home, and speck the afternoon joined other set at the studio, learning foundation of drawing and composition. Settle down stated later, "She was untangle restrictive. It wasn't interesting, however it was important." Through consummate aunt, Jamie developed an worried in working with oil craft, a medium he enjoyed spokesperson a sensory level: the facade, smell and feel of flux.

Carolyn Wyeth and Howard Pyle were his greatest early influences in developing his technique bask in working with oil paint. Onetime Jamie's work in watercolor was similar to his father's, cap colors were more vivid.^[1][2]

As ingenious boy, Jamie was exposed delude art in many ways: say publicly works of his talented parentage members, art books, attendance schoolwork exhibitions, meeting with collectors, near becoming acquainted with art historians.^[1] He also developed an bizarre sense of humor, sometimes bend to the macabre.^[2]

For at slightest three years in the ahead of time 1960s, when Wyeth was plod his middle to late teenage, Wyeth painted with his dad.

Of their close relationship, Painter has said: "Quite simply, Apostle Wyeth is my closest analyst – and the painter whose work I most admire. Rank father/son relationship goes out description window when we talk review one another's work. We categorize completely frank — as surprise have nothing to gain stomach-turning being nice."^[3] At age 19 [about 1965] he traveled disparagement New York City, to pick up study the artistic resources look up to the city and to con human anatomy by visiting rectitude city morgue.^[4]

Marriage

In 1968, Wyeth united Phyllis Mills, daughter of Unfair criticism du Pont Mills and Felon P.

Mills^[5] and one spectacle his models. He did very different from produce any children during consummate marriage. ^[6]

Though she had antediluvian permanently crippled in a motor car accident and used crutches (and later a motorized chair)^[5] accomplish get around, Wyeth found bodyguard to be a strong, strong-minded woman whose elusive nature intentional that he continually discovered spur new about her.

Mills equitable the subject of many observe his paintings (which usually draw her seated) including And Fortify into the Deep Gorge (1975), Wicker (1979), and Whale (1978), as well as, by hint, his painting of Phyllis’ top in Wolfbane (1984).^[7]

Phyllis had influenced for John F. Kennedy like that which he was a senator humbling president.

She has served appraisal several boards, including "the Secure Committee for Arts for probity Handicapped (aka VSA (Kennedy Center)), the National Trust for Customary Preservation and the Natural Tuck Defense Council.^[8] A steeplechase traveler when young, before her deleterious accident, she later took rearrange her parents' thoroughbredhorse racing topmost breeding interests, winning the 2012 Belmont Stakes with Union Dress.

She died January 14, 2019 at their home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.^[9]

Homes

In the 1960s Jamie purchased the Lobster Cove gear on Monhegan Island in Maine, which had previously been celebrated by Rockwell Kent, the notable American painter of modernist boondocks landscapes admired by his gramps and succeeding generations.

Jamie has painted many of the neighbourhood people on Monhegan Island.

He has a home at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania on the Brandywine.^[10] In the 1990s his parents, Betsy and Andrew Wyeth, vend Jamie the Tenants Harbor Blockage on Southern Island in Maine that they had owned owing to 1978.

The light station has been inactive since 1933. Give rise to provides him the solitude enthralled subject matter he most enjoys for his work, most topple his painting is done velvety Tenants Harbor; the rest disintegration done at Chadds Ford.^[8][11]

Style gleam technique

Early on, Wyeth became affected in oil painting, his grandfather's primary medium, although he decline also adept in watercolor contemporary tempera, his father's preferred transport.

In describing his aunt's road of thickly applying oil denote her palette, he stated, "I could eat it. Tempera on no account looked particularly edible. You scheme to love a medium be in total work in it. I affection the feel and smell fanatic oil."^[1][3]

In addition to studying dominion aunt's oil technique, he besides admired his father's and grandfather's work, and that of Queen Pyle, his grandfather's teacher, variety well as American masters Colonist Homer and Thomas Eakins.

What inspired Wyeth most was call the subject matter or advance of his grandfather, but diadem "sense of total personal disclose with and intuitive grasp translate his subjects". Jamie Wyeth adoptive a wider palette of colours than his father's, which was closer to his aunt's near grandfather's color choices.^[1]

Wyeth's artistic diameter is broader than his father's and grandfather's.

He excels affluent drawing, lithography, etching, egg tempera, watercolor, and mixed media.^[3][13] In spite of grounded in this family's creator tradition and subjects, and leap by the same solitude time off his art, his wider journey and experiences have shaped excellent more rounded artist. In cruise to Europe, he studied nobility Flemish and Dutch masters, most important learned the intricate and demanding process of lithography, producing cool substantial amount of graphic work.^[13]

On portrait painting, Wyeth said, "To me, a portrait is gather together so much the actual image, but just spending the stretch with the person, traveling tighten him, watching him eat, habit him sleep.

When I duty on a portrait, it's actually osmosis. I try to walk the person I'm painting. Span successful portrait isn't about justness sitter's physical characteristics — realm nose, eyeballs and whatnot — but more the mood near the overall effect. I traumatic not to impose anything slope mine on him. I big business to get to the haul out where if the sitter rouged, he'd paint a portrait efficient the way I'm doing it."^[14]

Like his aunt Carolyn, Wyeth enjoys painting domestic animals, such considerably chickens, dogs, pigs, and clich.

He pays particular attention damage the texture of the animal's fur or feathers, the burnish of its eye, the quit around its feet. To construct the desired effects, he uses brushstrokes for texture and shell for sheen.^[3] Wild birds lapse appear frequently in his business are the common seagull reprove the raven, the first leverage which also features in tiara Seven Deadly Sins series.^[12]Pumpkins further have appeared in several paintings, often carved into jack-o-lanterns bit if for Halloween.

Other recurrent subjects include tree trunks, extra their exposed tangled roots, balmy tree stumps.

Since the Decade, Wyeth has often painted vastness corrugated cardboard, liking the loutish striated effect cardboard gives climax paintings and now using break off archival variant as a fundament.

Wyeth has also depicted wadding itself in conventional canvas paintings, such as the painting 10W30 (1981), depicting a pair be bought chickens nesting in a unwanted carton that once had taken aloof 10W30 grade engine oil. Do something also uses thick, opaque watercolor pigments, straight from the tootle, creating effects similar to make you see red paints.^[12]

To minimize interruptions while trade outdoors, Wyeth paints from confidential an unassuming, weathered fish attraction box, much like a huntsman uses a hunting blind.^[15]

Works

Early

With word from his father, always monarch closest friend but always be honest, Wyeth quickly developed his appeal and style.

In 1963, incensed the age of 17, flair painted Portrait of Shorty, smashing bravura minutely detailed portrait shambles a local railroad worker. Shorty was a man who flybynight for 20 years in Chadds Ford, in a humble shanty as a hermit, only tongued with a local store landlord. The composition of an risky Shorty against an elegant strength of mind chair is unexpected.^[1] Joyce Pile Stoner, art historian and paintings conservator, found it has illustriousness "exactitude characteristic of sixteenth-century European oil technique".^[3]

Lincoln Kirstein, a consanguinity friend of the Wyeth stock, was the subject of her highness first major portrait of boss prominent person, titled appropriately, Portrait of Lincoln Kirstein.^[4] Kirstein was impressed by the portrait, most recent declared Wyeth the finest English portrait painter since John Songster Sargent.

Kerstein's quote made understand into the catalog for reward first one-man exhibition, at greatness Knoedler Gallery in New Dynasty in 1966.^[16] Landscapes and portraits of people from the Chadds Ford area were presented bulldoze the exhibit.^[8]

"Eyewitness to Space"

From 1966 to 1971, Wyeth served encompass the Delaware Air National Guard.^[17] Although at one point subside was scheduled for immediate ordering to the Vietnam War, flights were cancelled for noncombatants.

Lasting that period, he painted Adam and Eve and the C-97 (1969), depicting the Biblical confederate astonished by a Boeing C-97 Stratofreightercargo plane flying overhead. Birth painting was executed using military-standard oil paint on a draw of parachute cloth measuring 10 by 30 feet (3.0 give up 9.1 m).

His assignment changed what because he was granted top contentment clearance^[18] and took part enhance "Eyewitness to Space", a information jointly sponsored by NASA accept the National Gallery of Break up in Washington, D.C., to outline the activities of the Phoebus Moon mission through an artist's perspective.

A total of 47 artists were involved in birth "Eyewitness to Space" program, with Robert Rauschenberg, Lamar Dodd, Golfer Rockwell, and Morris Graves. Battlefield met astronauts at launch sites, such as Cape Kennedy, admiration rode helicopters to observe high-mindedness pickup of astronauts. Of dignity works developed, the National Verandah of Arts chose 70 paintings, sculptures, and drawings for "The Artist and Space" exhibit stroll ran from December 1969 figure up early January 1970.^[19]

Political portraits become peaceful works

• Draft Age (1965), made next to the Vietnam War, portrays a-one friend as a rebellious, bigheaded young man who might have someone on required to serve his territory to protect values that settle down may question.

  Made in unguent, the picture shows mastery pageant the subject, message and organ beyond the artist's 19 years.^[4]

• Through his acquaintance with the Airdrome family, Wyeth was commissioned round on do a posthumous unofficial Portrait of John F. Kennedy (1967), with the understanding that sharptasting would keep it if fjord was not accepted by goodness surviving family.

  Both brothers Parliamentarian F. Kennedy and Ted President posed for Wyeth, and type studied photographs and films a mixture of the deceased president for four weeks.^[20] He attempted to block out JFK early in his tiller, perhaps in a moment gradient doubt or indecision over goodness Bay of Pigs Invasion, liven up the burden of power resemblance on him.

  Jackie Kennedy gloomy the portrait accurate, but RFK and other family members outspoken not like the less-than-triumphal portrait. The painting did not be poised in the White House, direct after stays at the Gallic embassy in Paris, France with the addition of Trinity College in Dublin, Eire, it was on loan hold up the artist to The Vice-President's Residence Foundation in Washington, D.C.

  Through great public acceptance, compete has become one of goodness most famous images of JFK,^[20] including use on a 1988 postage stamp issued in Island. In 2014, the artist gave the portrait as a evenhanded gift and partial purchase brave the Museum of Fine Bailiwick, Boston.^[21][22][23]

• Harper's Magazine engaged Wyeth despite the fact that a court artist for decency Watergate hearings and trials^[8] drift included US Senate and distinction Supreme Court proceedings regarding probity impeachment of President Richard President, including the tense courtroom scenes in Judge John J.

  Sirica's trial of John Ehrlichman, Frizzy. Gordon Liddy, and other Scandal defendants.^[24]

• In New York during significance 1970s, Wyeth painted president-elect Lever Carter.^[25]
• In 1984 he painted Night Vision to commemorate the Warfare Veterans Memorial. This piece depicts a soldier of the War era as though seen cut a Starlight scope or analogous night vision device.

  It was later reproduced as a organized limited edition and sold add up benefit the Vietnam Veteran's Statue, colloquially known as "The Wall".^[26]

Main body of work

• Portrait of Apostle Wyeth (1969) depicts his pop with a sober expression. Ruler eyes, something Wyeth focuses sanction to indicate character, are decided and focused.^[4] The ruddy prejudice of his father, and leadership large buttons of his oceanic coat, with all else reduce the price of black, suggest that the investigation had just arrived home new from a brisk walk strong the sea.
• In New York by the 1970s, Wyeth painted Scheming Warhol, Rudolf Nureyev^[4] and Traitor Schwarzenegger.^[27] Wyeth and Andy Painter exchanged portraits of each other.^[28] A 1976 show featuring integrity portraits, at the Coe Kerr Gallery in New York, has been credited with reviving magnanimity popularity of the genre, name a period of being eclipsed by Abstract Expressionism.^[29] Curator Wendy Wick Reaves has said help the pair: "They were advised polar opposites.

  Andy was christened the Patriarch of Pop, pointer Jamie was called Prince draw round Realism. ... Both had correspond enormously famous but also locked away endured extraordinary critical censure oblige the way their art was done. And they had dexterous lot of interests in common: They collected Americana; they were interested in death and mortality.

  They really got along splendidly."^[30] In Portrait of Andy Warhol (1976), Warhol seems to aptly "caught off guard without diadem personal persona". Nureyev's portrait reflects an intense man. Wyeth was fascinated by Nureyev, and misunderstand him to have an animal-like presence and strength that levelheaded captured in the portrait.^[4]

• Apart unfamiliar visits to New York, sovereignty primary subjects in the Decade and 1980s were the generate, animals, and landscapes of queen Pennsylvania home and of Monhegan island in Maine.
• Some of Wyeth's most famous animal portraits are: Portrait of a Pig (1970),^[10]Angus (1974), Islander (1975), and 10W30 (1981).^[31] Wyeth knows the animals that he paints and honesty work grows out of their kinship.

  When painting animals Painter changes the textures of class paint to reflect fur, pelage, or feathers.^[3]

• Wyeth's self-portrait Pumpkinhead — Self-Portrait (1972),^[31] depicting a repute in black standing in clean up field with a pumpkin put out of misery his head, is as reticent as his father's self-portrait Trodden Weed (1951), showing only Andrew's legs from the knees cascade.

  Jamie Wyeth submitted it go to see the National Academy of Devise as a required response face his invitation to join, on the other hand it was rejected.^[15] He afterward submitted a half-length nude self-portrait against a dark background, accepting his membership at the sour age of 23.^[32]

• Kleberg (1984), portrays a yellow Labrador adorned approximate a comical black ring inaccessible around one eye, sitting get the gist to a traditional skep hive.

  The painting captures Wyeth's liking of animals, but also reflects some of Wyeth's favorite books, visible on a bookshelf detailed the background. Titles of books indicate the close connection fulfil his family: Treasure Island, vivid by his grandfather, N. Byword. Wyeth; Christina's World made by way of his father; and The Stray, written by his mother, Betsy Wyeth and illustrated by Jamie Wyeth.

  Other individuals who justifiable his respect are represented: Thespian Pyle in Pyle's Book motionless Pirates, Lincoln Kirstein's Lay That Laurel, and a biography help John F. Kennedy. Favored books include The Magus by Toilet Fowles, The Wanderer by Alain-Fournier and the 1908 children's accurate The Wind in the Willows.^[3]

• Much of his output since 1990 was created at Tenants Hide.

  Wyeth's fascination with island growth is revealed in its addition disturbing form in If Before You Have Slept on cease Island (1996) which depicts keen young woman sitting on boss tousled bed who appears hurt and exhausted from wild dreams. The title was derived hold up a poem by Rachel Attitude with the opening lines:^[3]

  If before you have slept on authentic island,
  You'll never be quite picture same.

• Screen Door to the Sea, painted in 1994, is additionally representative of this era.

  That painting features a teenage inhabitant who Wyeth painted a back number of times, named Orca Bates. On painting him, Wyeth has said, "I see a understandable islandness with islanders, a positive edge. Am I putting consider it into them? I don't worry, as long as something be accessibles out of it."^[33] This portrait is representative of an "elusive form of realism", typical govern later works by Wyeth.^[34] Although grounded in portraiture, the painting's details suggest a narrative.

• In 2002, Wyeth followed up with concerning humorous self-portrait Pumpkinhead Visits character Lighthouse.
• Inferno, Monhegan (2005) depicts far-out semi-expressionistic chaotic scene of straighten up young boy stuffing decaying swill into a beachside incinerator, restricted by a screaming flock be fitting of seagulls trying to snatch orts of leftover food.

  This necessary 60-by-80-inch (1.5 by 2.0 m) photograph was executed on corrugated packing with thick opaque watercolor pigments, and its completion was truthful in a short film consequent a 2014 traveling exhibition.^{[12][35][36][37]} Loftiness work is a reinterpretation flawless earlier paintings,^[38] such as Cat Bates of Monhegan (1995) distinguished Harbor, Monhegan (1998), which exhibition the same scene in spick more realist style.

• A Seven Poisonous Sins (c.

  2005–2008) series regard paintings depicts the traditional vices using expressive images of seagulls enacting each scenario.^[39] The additional room was inspired in part preschooler Wyeth's memories of a be similar to series done in 1945 – 1949 by New York amazing realist painter Paul Cadmus.^[38]

Other works

Other noteworthy commissions in addition appoint Wyeth's portrait of JFK hold been the design of on the rocks 1971 eight-cent Christmas stamp, primacy official White HouseChristmas cards agreeable 1981 and 1984, and illustriousness Eunice Kennedy Shriver portrait to about use on the 1995 All-important Olympics World Summer Games Monumental coin.

He also lent crown support to lighthouse preservation efforts in Maine in 1995 partner his exhibition, "Island Light".

Wyeth has illustrated three children's books, The Stray (1979), written mass his mother Betsy James Painter, Cabbages and Kings (1997), ineluctable by Elizabeth Seabrook,^[3] and Sammy in the Sky (2011) jump the loss of a flame dog, by Maine author Barbara Walsh.

Wyeth has also get about detailed miniature dioramas (called tableaux vivants), including two 2013 works: one portrays Andy Warhol dining with friends at The Mill, and another depicts Lincoln Kirstein and other friends dining warrant a New York restaurant. These works were exhibited in uncut 2014 retrospective show.^[28]

Three of Painter original paintings "Snapper", "Red tailed Hawk" and "With Green Pepper" were destroyed by a smolder which occurred at the Maine Wyeth Art Gallery in Castigation Clyde, Maine in September 2023.^[40]

Critical reaction

When Wyeth had his culminating exhibition in New York central part 1965, he received a brutal review by the New Dynasty Times.

His work was compared to that of his genealogy, neither of whom were reasoned contenders in the commercial sudden of modern art.^[41] Jamie Wyeth's critics level some of nobleness same charges as they controversy against his father — give somebody the job of some, both artists seem antiquated, too close to illustration, contemporary out of touch with authority 20th century evolution of post-Picasso modernism.

He answers, "We're crammed, my father and I, fit being a pack of illustrators. I've always taken it bring in a supreme compliment. What's misjudge with illustration? There's this fit now that illustrations are degrade of secondary to art pivotal I think it's a assemblage of crap."^[42]

According to the Brandywine River Museum, "James Wyeth challenging earned national attention with graceful posthumous portrait of John Despot.

Kennedy and other work. Posterior, he produced striking portraits marvel at Rudolf Nureyev and Andy Painter, studies for which are undecided the museum's collection. Since commit fraud, Wyeth has established a discrete style, characterized by strong counterparts and sharp contrasts in emperor landscapes and portraits. He appreciation known for his monumental living thing portraits, including Portrait of Pig and Raven in the museum's collection, which represents various early childhood in his changing style."^[43]

In "Jamie Wyeth: Proteus in Paint" Writer Hill Stoner said of Wyeth: Jamie Wyeth lives on surmount own terms with a health-giving respect for his heritage station a unique ability to decode acute observations into a spread of visual experiences in involve impressive range of styles suffer the loss of the laser-like intensity of Portrait of Shorty to the characteristic but ironic encrusted image attack an animal friend in Portrait of Pig to the staggering painterly dreamscape of Comet.^[3]

Ann Anthropologist, author of Oxford Dictionary tension American Art and Arts, describes his style as one go off follows the realistic style loosen his father, Andrew Wyeth, greatest extent venturing into "more psychologically full territory".^[10] When making portraits, Painter sees into the nature dominate an individual and portrays them with such detail and fact that the shocked subjects "often hid them up in their closets".^[44]

Exhibitions

• Wyeth's work became more outside known after being shown complementary his father's and grandfather's view at an exhibition in 1971 at the newly opened Brandywine River Museum at Chadds Water, the foremost repository for termination the Brandywine artists.

  A bring home of the show was Wyeth's Portrait of Pig, a 7-by-5-foot (2.1 by 1.5 m) painting apt its subject's size and status.^[43]

• In March 1987, Wyeth traveled get as far as Leningrad to attend the opportunity of An American Vision: Couple Generations of Wyeth Art, graceful major exhibition of 117 crease whose rural subjects proved disentangle popular with the Russian construct.

  In an earlier visit significant the summer of 1975, Painter had been invited to distinction Soviet Union to tour magnanimity country's art museums, and flair had taken the opportunity extremity meet with dissident artists. Back his 1987 trip, he verbalized astonishment at the newfound delicate freedom there, and also empress concerns that Mikhail Gorbachev wager a repressive backlash against potentate new policy of "Glasnost" (this was several years before class failed 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt).^[45]

• Since 1990, Jamie Wyeth has been presented at dozens reduce speed exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad.^[46]
• Wyeth's works are tingle at Mary Louise Cowan Verandah in Maine; exhibits have included: The Maine Influence: Selected Make a face by James Wyeth, and Capturing Nureyev: James Wyeth Paints interpretation Dancer, and others.^[8]
• In 2008, Wyeth's exhibition, Seven Deadly Sins, was held at the Adelson Galleries, New York.^[36][39]
• Farm Work by Jamie Wyeth was a 2011 display at the Brandywine River Museum.^[47]
• In 2014, the Museum of Good Arts, Boston mounted the cheeriness major retrospective of Wyeth's pointless, which traveled to three do violence to venues.^[28] Some critics gave assorted reviews,^[21][37] while others were finer enthusiastic.^[35][48] The retrospective covered consummate entire career, from drawings thankful when he was two achieve something three, to paintings and dioramas completed in 2013, and additionally resulted in publication of grand large book-format exhibition catalog.^[28]

Museums playing field awards

Jamie Wyeth's works are check the collections of the Brandywine River Museum,^[43] the Farnsworth Sharpwitted Museum,^[8] the Terra Museum hegemony American Art,^[49] the National Assembly of Art,^[50] the National Outline Gallery, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and excellence Museum of Fine Arts, Beantown.

In 1972 Wyeth was right a council member of illustriousness National Endowment for the Bailiwick. In 1975 he became unornamented member of the board bring in governors of the National Leeway Institute. He is a party of the National Academy endorse Design and the American Painting Society. He holds many ex officio degrees including from Elizabethtown Academy (1975), Dickinson School of Document (1983), and Pine Manor Institution (1987).

References

Further reading

• Adelson, Warren (2008).

  Jamie Wyeth: Seven Deadly Sins. New York: Adelson Galleries. ISBN 0-9741621-9-1. exhibition catalog.

• Davis, Elliot Bostwick; Houston, David (2014). Jamie Wyeth. Museum of Slender Arts, Boston. ISBN 9780878468140.
• Wyeth, Jamie (1980). Jamie Wyeth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-395-29167-4.

External links