Smoke House

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 Smoke House. 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 and technique, culminating in an quiet scene of poignant beauty.

Depicting a basket of apples in the orchard of the artist's father N.C. Wyeth in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Smoke House is devoid of a physical human presence, but, like many of Wyeth's works, carries a strong sense of unseen life. While we cannot see the artist, his gaze pervades the stillness of the scene. The nuances of this deceptively simple painting are further rendered with incredible artistry and painterly sophistication. Through the skillfully layered application of watercolor, Wyeth lends a tangible quality of life and texture to the landscape that he loved.