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拍品专文
"Andrew Wyeth generally offered mystery rather than certainty in his art." - S.C. Larsen
For over half a century, Andrew Wyeth's art has proven to be the most enduring of any American Realist and has brought the artist acclaim both at home and abroad. His work has been appreciated for its seeming simplicity and its sheer beauty, for its celebration of rural American life, and for the haunting, elegiac silence that often pervades his compositions, such as Circus Day. Susan C. Larsen writes, “Andrew Wyeth generally offered mystery rather than certainty in his art. The power of the unseen at work in nature and in human life gives his art its power and unique presence.” (Wondrous Strange, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1998, p. 18) Indeed, the present work demonstrates Wyeth’s exquisite attention to subject, technique and design, culminating in an intimate scene of poignant beauty.
Circus Day depicts the artist’s dog, Nell Gwyn, sleeping in the doorway of his home at the Brinton Mill’s compound in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. According to Wyeth, “the sleeping Nell was an extension pictorially of the sleeping Helga studies,” likening this intimate depiction of a beloved pet at rest to his paintings of his most notorious model, Helga Testorf. Helga was a 38-year-old German woman helping around Wyeth’s neighbor Karl Kuerner’s home as a nurse. The artist was immediately fascinated by her, creating 240 works featuring Helga from 1971 to 1985. The majority of the series was kept secret, only later revealed in August 1986, appearing as headline news on the covers of Time and Newsweek. From contemplative to titillating, the Helga works, including over 35 works of Helga asleep, have captivated audiences ever since with their intense intimacy. The present work even more closely relates to Wyeth’s 1979 tempera of his dog, Night Sleeper (The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection), which as Patricia Junker writes, “might have...seemed to him a triumph of voyeurism, a painting of his subject completely unaware of being watched as she was transported from wakefulness to a world of dreams.” (Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect, exhibition catalogue, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 2017, p. 157)
"the sleeping Nell was an extension pictorially of the sleeping Helga studies." - Andrew Wyeth
In Circus Day, Wyeth highlights Nell Gwyn with a beam of bright sunlight, perhaps alluding to the illumination of the dreamworld—a stark juxtaposition to the frank realism of his style. As seen in many of Wyeth’s best works, the work notably includes a window gleaming in the darkness of the interior space. The window was a signature motif prevalent throughout Wyeth’s career, perhaps most famously in Wind from the Sea (1947, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) This theme of being in-between spaces is underscored by Nell’s positioning at another threshold, an open doorway. Anne Knutson explains, “Wyeth associates the liminal spaces of thresholds with psychological states of thinking, imagining, and dreaming; the paintings become magical chambers where dreams are played out.” (Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic, Atlanta, 2005, p. 75).
The nuances of this deceptively simple painting are rendered with incredible artistry and painterly sophistication. Through the use of drybrush, watercolor and gouache, Wyeth lends a tangible quality of life, texture and even smell to the scene. The full sacks of milled material take on a sculptural presence against the richly textured wood floor and stone wall, all composed with both daring, broad washes of pigment and intensely fine detail. Each purposeful dash of paint is essential to building a complex scene that reveals Wyeth’s deep visual and psychological understanding of his environment and community. “Art, to me, is seeing,” Wyeth has said. “I think you have got to use your eyes as well as your emotion, and one without the other just doesn't work. That's my art.” (as quoted in Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: Kuerners and Olsons, p. 185)
"I think one’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes." - Andrew Wyeth
Further, Wyeth once explained, “I think one’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes. I see no reason for painting but that. If I have anything to offer, it is my emotional contact with the place where I live and the people I do.” (as quoted in Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect, p. 162) Emblematic of his genius technique, Circus Day captures the deeply personal connection that permeates the artist’s best work, as well as Wyeth’s embrace of Post-World War II techniques of design. The present work is at once easy to understand, while also ceaselessly fascinating and enigmatic, as Wyeth provokes the viewer to contemplate the mysteries to be found within his vision of modern American life.
For over half a century, Andrew Wyeth's art has proven to be the most enduring of any American Realist and has brought the artist acclaim both at home and abroad. His work has been appreciated for its seeming simplicity and its sheer beauty, for its celebration of rural American life, and for the haunting, elegiac silence that often pervades his compositions, such as Circus Day. Susan C. Larsen writes, “Andrew Wyeth generally offered mystery rather than certainty in his art. The power of the unseen at work in nature and in human life gives his art its power and unique presence.” (Wondrous Strange, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1998, p. 18) Indeed, the present work demonstrates Wyeth’s exquisite attention to subject, technique and design, culminating in an intimate scene of poignant beauty.
Circus Day depicts the artist’s dog, Nell Gwyn, sleeping in the doorway of his home at the Brinton Mill’s compound in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. According to Wyeth, “the sleeping Nell was an extension pictorially of the sleeping Helga studies,” likening this intimate depiction of a beloved pet at rest to his paintings of his most notorious model, Helga Testorf. Helga was a 38-year-old German woman helping around Wyeth’s neighbor Karl Kuerner’s home as a nurse. The artist was immediately fascinated by her, creating 240 works featuring Helga from 1971 to 1985. The majority of the series was kept secret, only later revealed in August 1986, appearing as headline news on the covers of Time and Newsweek. From contemplative to titillating, the Helga works, including over 35 works of Helga asleep, have captivated audiences ever since with their intense intimacy. The present work even more closely relates to Wyeth’s 1979 tempera of his dog, Night Sleeper (The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection), which as Patricia Junker writes, “might have...seemed to him a triumph of voyeurism, a painting of his subject completely unaware of being watched as she was transported from wakefulness to a world of dreams.” (Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect, exhibition catalogue, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 2017, p. 157)
"the sleeping Nell was an extension pictorially of the sleeping Helga studies." - Andrew Wyeth
In Circus Day, Wyeth highlights Nell Gwyn with a beam of bright sunlight, perhaps alluding to the illumination of the dreamworld—a stark juxtaposition to the frank realism of his style. As seen in many of Wyeth’s best works, the work notably includes a window gleaming in the darkness of the interior space. The window was a signature motif prevalent throughout Wyeth’s career, perhaps most famously in Wind from the Sea (1947, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) This theme of being in-between spaces is underscored by Nell’s positioning at another threshold, an open doorway. Anne Knutson explains, “Wyeth associates the liminal spaces of thresholds with psychological states of thinking, imagining, and dreaming; the paintings become magical chambers where dreams are played out.” (Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic, Atlanta, 2005, p. 75).
The nuances of this deceptively simple painting are rendered with incredible artistry and painterly sophistication. Through the use of drybrush, watercolor and gouache, Wyeth lends a tangible quality of life, texture and even smell to the scene. The full sacks of milled material take on a sculptural presence against the richly textured wood floor and stone wall, all composed with both daring, broad washes of pigment and intensely fine detail. Each purposeful dash of paint is essential to building a complex scene that reveals Wyeth’s deep visual and psychological understanding of his environment and community. “Art, to me, is seeing,” Wyeth has said. “I think you have got to use your eyes as well as your emotion, and one without the other just doesn't work. That's my art.” (as quoted in Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: Kuerners and Olsons, p. 185)
"I think one’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes." - Andrew Wyeth
Further, Wyeth once explained, “I think one’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes. I see no reason for painting but that. If I have anything to offer, it is my emotional contact with the place where I live and the people I do.” (as quoted in Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect, p. 162) Emblematic of his genius technique, Circus Day captures the deeply personal connection that permeates the artist’s best work, as well as Wyeth’s embrace of Post-World War II techniques of design. The present work is at once easy to understand, while also ceaselessly fascinating and enigmatic, as Wyeth provokes the viewer to contemplate the mysteries to be found within his vision of modern American life.