Andrew Wyeth American, 1917-2009
82.9 x 96.5 cm
Further images
The Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center of the Brandywine Museum of Art confirms that this object is recorded in Betsy James Wyeth’s files.
In 1940, Woodchopper was chosen by more than a hundred American museum and art gallery directors to represent twenty-three-year-old Andrew Wyeth at the Carnegie Institute’s Survey of American Painting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, an exhibition conceived to bring together the country’s finest painters. A rare early Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, tempera painted in 1940 during a critical moment when Wyeth began developing his signature meticulous approach to painting in tempera, Woodchopper represents a turning point for the artist who was already well known as a Maine watercolor prodigy. One of the first Chadds Ford temperas Wyeth ever exhibited, Woodchopper depicts his neighbor and friend, Adam Johnson, who would become a favorite subject of the artist’s. As a testament to their enduring friendship, Wyeth gifted Woodchopper to Johnson at the close of the Carnegie exhibition.
Provenance
The artist; by gift toAdam Albert Johnson, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 1940;
Frank Fowler, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, 1981;
Private collection;
The present owner, 2010
Exhibitions
St. Andrew's School, Middletown, Delaware, Exhibition of the Work of Andrew Wyeth, April 1–April 22, 1940Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Survey of American Painting, October 24–December 15, 1940, no. 332
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Wyeth: Three Generations of Artistry, September 17–November 29, 2009
Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina, Andrew Wyeth: The Greenville Collection, March 14, 2012–May 19, 2013
Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina, Wyeth Dynasty, November 16, 2016–September 10, 2017
Literature
Homer Saint-Gaudens, ed., Survey of American Painting, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute, Department of Fine Arts, 1940, no. 332Gene Logsdon, Wyeth People: A Portrait of Andrew Wyeth as He Is Seen by His Friends and Neighbors, 1969, reprint Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971, pp. 62–63
Richard Meryman, Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life, New York: HarperPerennial, 1996, pp. 187–191
Betsy James Wyeth with Andrew Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth: Close Friends, Seattle: University of Washington Press, in association with Mississippi Museum of Art, 2001, pp. 50–51, 155, illus. in color p. 51
Becca Ramspott and Warren Adelson, Wyeth: Three Generations of Wyeth Artistry, Kansas City: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 2009, no. 35
Cindy Landrum, "Wyeth collection expands," Greenville Journal, February 24, 2012, p. 8
Chesnee C.S. Klein, "Wyeth 2012," Greenville: Greenville County Museum of Art, 2012, p. 3
Paul Hyde, "New paintings fill in portrait of Wyeth," The Greenville News, February 23, 2012
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