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Spindrift

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Spindrift

1950
tempera on masonite
15 in. x 36 1/2 in. (38.1 cm x 92.71 cm)
Currier Funds, 1950.2

Andrew Wyeth
American
1917–2009

ON VIEW

Long esteemed for his extraordinary Realist vision and straightforward subject matter, Andrew Wyeth is arguably the most popular living painter in the United States. The son of illustrator and painter Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945), the artist was born in 1917 in Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania. He studied drawing and painting under his father, and, inspired by the watercolors of Winslow Homer (q.v.), he developed an early realist style akin to that of the nineteenth-century master. Not long afterward, Wyeth began to paint in the traditional medium of egg tempera, creating works of exacting verisimilitude. Both his watercolors and temperas attracted attention from the start, and from the time of his first New York show at age twenty-two, Wyeth has remained in the forefront of contemporary Realist painting.

Following the untimely death of his father at a railroad crossing in 1945, Wyeth began to infuse his work with a somber and enigmatic quality that has persisted throughout his career. In the years after World War II, the artist focused much of his attention on two families, the Kuerners in Pennsylvania and the Olsons in Maine. Admiring their simplicity and tenacity, Wyeth celebrated them in numerous well-known canvases, including the iconic Christina's World, purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1949. Despite (or perhaps because of) the bleakness of much of his work, Wyeth became something of a celebrity following the sale of Christina's World, and he enjoyed widespread popularity through the heyday of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. With the broader revival of figurative painting beginning in the 1960s, Wyeth has become more popular than ever. One of the small number of living artists to be accorded a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in 1976), Wyeth gained added notoriety in the 1980s following the unveiling of a series of portraits known as the Helga Pictures. Wyeth continued to paint and exhibit his work until his death in 2009 at the age of 91.

The Currier's Spindrift is a relatively early example of the egg tempera paintings for which the artist is today best known. Like many of Wyeth's works, the subject is impressively "real" and deceptively simple in appearance: grounded on a gravelly Maine beach, a sturdy dory is seemingly mocked by the darting swallow in the lower left. Yet the monochromatic cast of the painting as well as its insistent focus on the central object give the work an iconic austerity that argues for a deeper meaning.

The significance of Spindrift, however, is elusive. On one level, the artist has stated that the painting is a kind of portrait, in this case, of Maine lobsterman Henry Teel. According to Wyeth, "Henry Teel would come in from hauling lobster pots about 10:30 in the morning, pull his dory up on the beach, stow his oars and tackle neatly, and go indoors to cook himself a meal. This is a portrait of Henry without showing the man himself: these are all the things he used, shaped by his life and by the sea."(1) Yet the spare handling and almost immaculate quality of the subject imply a higher meaning. Painted only a few years after the death of the artist's father, Wyeth's image of an empty boat may serve on some level as a memorial to a beloved parent. In many cultures, ships and boats serve as metaphoric bearers of the soul to an afterlife; here, the inclusion of a swallow, an ancient symbol of Christ's Resurrection, lends further support to the idea. On a more general level, the rise and fall of the tide (here it is unclear whether the tide is coming in or going out) suggest universal cycles of death and rebirth.

"Spindrift" is a nautical term describing spray blown from the sea by ocean winds. It is also a name frequently given to ships and seaside hostelries. For Wyeth, its meaning may embody any number of associations. In the context of his father's death, it is perhaps evocative of dissolution and the evanescence of life.

Spindrift was painted during the summer of 1950 and purchased by the Currier Museum of Art shortly afterward. Today it holds a place among paintings by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins (q.v.) and Edward Hopper (q.v.) as one of the Museum's premier examples of American Realism.

VSD

NOTE

1. Andrew Wyeth quoted or paraphrased in Andrew Wyeth (ex. cat. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1966), p. 34, cat. 39.

REFERENCES

Andrew Wyeth. Ex. cat. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1966.

Wanda M. Corn. The Art of Andrew Wyeth. Ex. cat. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1973.


Exhibition
1950 Macbeth Gallery, New York, NY, "Andrew Wyeth." Nov. 21 - Dec. 9.

1951 Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, OH, "Few Are Chosen." March 9 - April 8.

1951 "Paintings and Drawings by Andrew Wyeth." Organized by the Currier Gallery of Art and the William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum. Traveled to: Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, July 7 - Aug. 4; William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, ME, Aug. 10 - Sept. 8, cat. no. 29.

1952 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, "Andrew Wyeth - Waldo Pierce." June 5 - 21.

1953 M. Knoedler & Co., New York, NY, "Exhibition of Paintings by Andrew Wyeth." Oct. 26 - Nov. 14.

1954 Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, "Four Americans from the Real to the Abstract." Jan. 10 - Feb. 11.

1954 Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, "61st American Exhibition." Oct. 21 - Dec. 5.

1955 Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, "Five Painters of America." Feb. 17 - April 3.

1956 "Andrew Wyeth." Organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in co-operation with the M. H. deYoung Memorial Museum and M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, NY. Traveled to: M. H. deYoung Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA, July 12 - Aug. 12; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, Aug. 28 - Sept. 23.

1957 Delaware Art Center, Wilmington, DE, "Andrew Wyeth." Jan. 7 - Feb. 3.

1960 New Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, "Andrew Wyeth: A Retrospective Exhibition in Temperas and Watercolors." Nov. 9 - Dec. 4.

1962 Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, "Andrew Wyeth: Tempera, Watercolors and Drawings." Nov. 2 - Dec. 9.

1963 University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ, "Andrew Wyeth: An Exhibition of Watercolors, Temperas and Drawings." March - April.

1966-1967 "Andrew Wyeth: Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush and Drawings." Organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Traveled to: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Oct. 5 - Nov. 27, 1966; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, Dec. 11, 1966 - Jan. 22, 1967; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, Feb. 6, 1967 - April 2, 1967; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, April 21 - June 4, 1967.

1970 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, "Andrew Wyeth: A Retrospective Exhibition." July 16 - Sept. 6.

1971 St. Paul's School, Concord, NH, "Andrew Wyeth." April 1 - May 5.

1974 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "American Art Since 1914." June 15 - Sept. 8.

1982 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Masterworks by Artists of New England." April 3 - May 16.

1983 Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, "Maine Temperas by Andrew Wyeth." April - Sept.

1985 Canton Art Institute, Canton, OH, "Andrew Wyeth from Public and Private Collections." Sept. 15 - Nov. 3.

1986 Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME, "Masterpieces from the Currier Gallery of Art." Sept. 11 - Nov. 2.

1994 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Brush to Paper: Masterpieces of American Watercolor from the Currier." March 8 - May 15.

2001 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "From Wyeth to Welliver: American Realism of the 20th Century." June 30 - Sept. 3.

2004-2005 "Andrew Wyeth: Early Watercolors." Organized by the Currier Museum of Art. Traveled to: Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, Oct. 8, 2004 - Jan. 10, 2005; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME, April 5 - Sept. 18.

2005 Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, PA, “Andrew Wyeth: Early Watercolors.” Oct. 1 - Nov. 20.

2010 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, "From Homer to Hopper: American Watercolor Masterworks from the Currier Museum of Art." March 6 - June 7.

2017 Brandywine River Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, PA, "Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect." June 24 - Sept. 17, 2017; Seattle Art Museum, Oct. 19, 2017 - Jan. 15, 2018.

Provenance
William Macbeth, Inc., New York, NY
Purchased by Currier Gallery of Art, 1950

Additional Images
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