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Lot Essay
The present work depicts the artist's dog, Nell Gwyn, running on the frozen mill race behind the Wyeths' home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Characteristic of some of Andrew Wyeth's most poignant works, the artist has employed the watercolor medium to successfully capture the tone of a winter's day. In discussing his 1978 watercolor, Mill in Winter (Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan), Wyeth comments, "I love the bleakness of winter and snow and get a thrill out of the chill...I'm taken by the bleakness--not the melancholy of the feeling of snow. My winter scenes differ from those of other artists in that they're not romantic. No! They capture that marvelous, lonely bleakness, the quiet, the shill reality of winter." (Andrew Wyeth Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, Nagoya, Japan, 1995, p. 245) Race Run successfully expresses both this sense of an individual lonely spirit embodied in Nell while at the same time captures the overall feeling of place. Nell ambles along alertly while her surroundings appear frozen in space and time.
The broad range of watercolor application is especially captivating in the present work. Wyeth has delicately highlighted the dog with quick strokes of transparent wash and used the texture of the paper to leave the frozen stream bed an open expanse. He then deftly applies layers of watercolor to the background to build up a dense forest upon which he has scratched into the surface to further indicate branches and underbrush, lending a complete depth to the scene. "Wyeth regards his watercolors as anything but precious. Tears frequently appear along the edges and many are creased or smudged. Working at a furious pace, he may hurl one study to the ground and quickly take up another. Typically his watercolors begin and end outdoors." (B. Venn, "Process of Invention: The Watercolors of Andrew Wyeth," Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth, New York, 1998, p. 47)
This watercolor will be included in Betsy James Wyeth's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's works.
The broad range of watercolor application is especially captivating in the present work. Wyeth has delicately highlighted the dog with quick strokes of transparent wash and used the texture of the paper to leave the frozen stream bed an open expanse. He then deftly applies layers of watercolor to the background to build up a dense forest upon which he has scratched into the surface to further indicate branches and underbrush, lending a complete depth to the scene. "Wyeth regards his watercolors as anything but precious. Tears frequently appear along the edges and many are creased or smudged. Working at a furious pace, he may hurl one study to the ground and quickly take up another. Typically his watercolors begin and end outdoors." (B. Venn, "Process of Invention: The Watercolors of Andrew Wyeth," Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth, New York, 1998, p. 47)
This watercolor will be included in Betsy James Wyeth's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's works.