Name: How Andrew Wyeth Made A Painting
Uploaded: 2026-02-04T17:22:42.000Z
Duration: 7 min 37 s
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Adverbs of degree

I worked and worked and worked on just the field, that swell, that curved of the field.

It's like building a house and then living in it.

then when I put it, it was right, that pink, like faded lobster shells that you find on the shore there.

Andrew Wyeth was 31 when he made Christina's World in Cushing, Maine, and

it's become one of the most recognizable American paintings of the 20th century.

There is unquestionably a great power in it, and

it's a power that is more accessible to the average person than some of the prevailing experimentation of that period.

That doesn't mean that it's any better or worse than a painting by, say, Jackson Pollock from the same year, only that, being realistic and dramatic, Christina's world more easily fits the shape of our memories, our dreams, our fears and cravings.

Okay, so what's the story Andrew Wyeth wants to tell with this painting?

What we can see is a woman lying in a field, looking up a gently sloping hill to a house and barn in the distance.

Her shape and her gaze draw you diagonally across the canvas to the home in the upper right.

From there, your eyes slip down the hilltop to the barn, then to the boundary where the tall grass meets the short, which curves forward and back down, dropping you off the woman again.

This constant movement from foreground to background intensifies the three dimensionality of the painting already felt in the careful work Wyeth puts into the swell and curve of the field.

Beyond this, there is a perfect asymmetrical balance between the woman and the shapes in the top third of the canvas.

These are design features that communicate a feeling of serenity immediately, without us even knowing why at first, like a bass note that's too low to hear, but

And yet, as we begin to look closer at Christina's world, a few things start to work against this calm.

For example, the colors, as in many of Wyeth's paintings, are muted, reflecting the particular austerity of New England landscapes, a common image in early American art and thought.

Even the woman's dress, which is the most striking color on the canvas, is a subdued pink, like faded lobster shells, as Wyeth describes it.

The next thing that stands out is the woman's posture, especially her thin and contorted arms, the way her hands grip the earth with a kind of nervous energy.

They are the only hint of what might be going on in her head.

Facing her away from the viewer creates an absence that in our interpretation of the scene, of the story, we're desperate to fill.

But that doesn't quite dispel the feeling of inscrutability, of not knowing, that charges the painting with tension.

There is more we can know about the woman in Christina's world if we want to.

Anna Christina Olson, who lived in the house from the painting with her brother Alvaro Olsen, suffered from Charcot Marie tooth disease, a neuromuscular disorder that robbed her of the use of her legs.

She refused to use a wheelchair, however, preferring to crawl using the strength of her arms.

I saw her crawling out to a little truck garden she had next to the house one day, and

it dawned on me and I went home that night.

I remember there was a small party being given at the James house.

And I remember in the middle of the party, I rushed out into a room in the studio that I had painted in and kept my material and made a quick notation of society, of Christine, the field, the house in the background.

Olsen was 55 at the time of the painting.

But if the figure in that pink dress looks more youthful, that's because Wyeth used his wife Betsy for a model of Christina's torso.

Only the arms portray her real condition.

To Wyeth, Christina's world wasn't the portrait of someone at just one point in time.

It was a painting of Christina's whole life, her weakness, but also her strength and vitality, and

above all, the deep, lifelong connection she had to this old family house in Maine and the land surrounding it.

You know, by painting a symbolic representation of that connection, by setting it in perpetual motion with this composition, by laboring for weeks and weeks on the grass and the shape of the field.

Wyeth, I think, was looking for a secret nature.

His work descends from the tradition of Emerson and Thoreau, who found in the natural world the basis for a new American philosophy.

Emerson writes in his essay Nature Crossing a bare common in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.

I often feel if I could only be not there to paint.

Just a pair of eyes would be so marvelous.

If I could just do something and disappear and just be terrific.

In his painting, Andrew Wyeth becomes Emerson's transparent eyeball.

He sees in the nature around him, even in the barren landscapes of New England, something profoundly real.

As an artist, he helps us to see it, too.

And it's a reminder, frankly, I need Living in a city, living online, it's easy to go about your day and see nothing at all now.

Getting back in touch with nature isn't a promise of happiness, as the tensions in Christina's world are careful to show.

But there is, I think, a piece of us in the land, in the trees, in the sky, and

a sense of wholeness waits for us when we can remember not to forget it.

But you see how important it is to be in a surrounding and breathe it.

If you're lucky and you're perceptive enough to catch it.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching.

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