Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth was an American realist painter who captured the quiet, and sometimes bleak, beauty of rural life in Pennsylvania and Maine. Homeschooled and trained by his illustrator father, N.C. Wyeth, Andrew's first solo show in New York City sold out at the tender age of twenty. He is best known for his iconic and haunting painting, "Christina's World". For decades, Wyeth's name was synonymous with a certain stoic American spirit. That is, until the 1980s, when the reveal of 246 secret paintings of his neighbor, Helga Testorf, sent the art world into a tizzy. Rumors of a clandestine, fifteen-year affair flew, though both Wyeth and Helga denied it. Was it a secret love affair or just an artist's intense focus? Wyeth himself claimed he had to "fall in love" with his subjects, even if it was a tree. So, was Helga his muse or just a very interesting maple? The world may never know.