A portrait of the Wyeths

[Ian David]

By Paul Lieberman
Los Angeles Times

ROCKLAND, Maine — It doesn't have to be the Fourth of July for Victoria Wyeth to tell her wildest fireworks story — the one about how they blew up Aunt Carolyn's ashes.

"She was crazy in a really fun way," Victoria explains. "She hated people, so she had like eight dogs around the house. ... So we decided to do something really cool for her funeral, so we cremated her ... then we took a big bomb with a big shell and stuffed her in it ... and we lit her up in front of her father's house. It was so loud it set off all the alarms, and the priest was there and he was drunk.

"It was too much," she sums it up, and if the nature of her family isn't obvious in the unique museum tours she leads, she drives that home, too. "I always talk," she says, "about how nuts they are."

She's been doing that for more than a decade, telling strangers about the Wyeth art, sure, but mostly overflowing with the stories about how Aunt Carolyn "went kaboom" or how Uncle Jamie played classical music to calm his pigs or how Grandma Betsy came to buy up islands like other women buy shoes.


Victoria Wyeth is shown in front of the Olson House in Cushing, Maine, the setting for her grandfather's famed painting "Christina's World." Victoria Wyeth now leads tours of the home.


Andrew Wyeth's self-portrait "Dr. Syn" painted in 1981, tempera on panel.

More:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003821093_wyeth04.html

[Heidi]

Thank you for this, IanDB1.

I realize it's not too fashionable (or so I'm told by other artists) to like the Wyeths' work, but I do and I always have.


"Christina's World"
Andrew Wyeth, 1948
Tempera on panel
32 × 48 cm

[LynneSin]

2. I have that picture right here on my bedroom wall

I'm looking at it right now as I type this post

[Heidi]

3. :thumbsup:

I love that one, too. :hi:

[liberaldemocrat7]

5. We have a girl cat named Panda, and the way she lays on the floor reminds me of the above picture.

I swear that Panda looks so cute when she does that. She stretches her legs out in back and front and lays like that woman in the picture. LOL

[bridgit]

1. wonderful link, thanks for posting...Wyeth, a family name in american art without equal...

:thumbsup:

[hippywife]

4. While Christina's World

isn't one of my favorites, I do love Wyeth's other works, mostly for his technique.

[Madrone]

6. Why is it not "fashionable?"

Asks a non artist.....


My favorite: