Andrew Wyeth 1917-2009

M. Knoedler & Co., New York
Mr. Alexander Laughlin, New York
Coe Kerr Gallery, New York
National Library Fund, St. Louis, Missouri (sold: Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, December 13-14, 1973, lot 42, illustrated)
Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York (acquired at the above sale)
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland (acquired from the above; sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 30, 1984, lot 80, illustrated)
Acquired at the above sale

San Antonio, Texas, Frost Bank, October 1973
New York, Andrew Crispo Gallery, Ten Americans: Masters of Watercolor, May-June 1974, no. 145

Betsy James Wyeth, Wyeth at Kuerners, Boston, Massachusetts, 1976, p. 142, illustrated in color

Good condition. Unframed: laid down on stretched paper, matburn along edges.
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Throughout his career Andrew Wyeth maintained a close relationship with his neighbors, particularly Karl Kuerner, who served as a surrogate father to Wyeth after the untimely death of his father N.C. in 1945. The Kuerner farm, located approximately one mile from Wyeth's home, was the subject of numerous works by the artist. In 1959 Wyeth produced a series of studies around the farm, including Firewood, which culminated in one of his most acclaimed works - Groundhog Day, 1959 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). With each new sketch, the artist shifted his focus to various subjects in the Kuerner's kitchen and around the exterior of their farmhouse. Wyeth recalled:

"I had just had lunch one day at the Kuerners (I do that all the time) and I left and wandered around the farm. Then I went up onto a hill where the pines are. I sat for a couple of hours and kept thinking about that kitchen down there with Anna Kuerner in it. And from the hill I saw Karl leaving to go to a farm sale in New Holland.... I started to make some drawing notations from memory showing Anna in the corner with the dog curled up on the cushion next to her. I went back to the house and got Anna to pose, but she didn't pose very well."

Wyeth continued to make dozens of sketches, his focus shifting away from Anna to the Kuerner's German Shepherd, Nellie, to the table set for Karl Kuerner, then the printed yellow wallpaper, until his attention was drawn to some freshly cut logs outside the window. Wyeth recounted:

"... I kept looking at the logs of a gum tree that had recently been cut. As the log was being hauled near the place, the dog went by quickly and I did a watercolor of that strange juxtaposition. I was very restless, perhaps bored, so I wandered all around. And then all of a sudden, the dog disappeared. ... The ragged, chopped, sharp sliver part of the log became, in another series of drawings, the dog that wasn't there: they became the fangs of the dog" (in The Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: The Kuerners and Olsons, 1976, p. 76, 82). 

Firewood depicts the Kuerner's kitchen window, the wooden post, the wire fence, and the gum tree log. Like most of the Groundhog Day studies, Firewood presents an entirely different perspective of the final scene and offers insight into Wyeth's imaginative picture-building technique.