Andrew Wyeth 1917 - 2009

Coe Kerr Gallery, New York
Private collection, Darien, Connecticut, 1982
By descent in the family to the present owner, circa 2006

Very good condition. Unframed: affixed to the mat in all four corners on the reverse.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In 1982, after summering in Maine for almost sixty years, Andrew Wyeth painted Sea Level, which depicts the worn, slatted wood siding of a schoolhouse owned by the Wyeths on Bradford Point in Cushing.  An unlit candelabra is visible in the natural light which seeps through the unadorned windows leaving the interior of the schoolhouse almost completely dark.  To the left of the one-room building, used by the Wyeths as a dining room, a small blue heron wades off shore. 

The Wyeth's acquisition of the schoolhouse in the 1940's had been Betsy's idea.  In 1977 the interior served as the setting for The Witching Hour, in which the large candelabra, suspended above an empty dining table, set the room aglow with its blazing flames, in the otherwise motionless space.  Wyeth told Richard Meryman that the flickering firelight was representative of Betsy's anger displayed in a building he described as a "typical Betsy project," one which Wyeth did not want to take on.   He felt the restoration and ownership of the property took away his freedom and autonomy.  As Meryman recounted: "To Andrew the house represented an anchor mooring him to this piece of earth.  Now his summer months could not be simple, irresponsible, organized solely by his painting impulses... Now Andrew felt himself turning into a man of property, of burdens" (Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life, 1996, pp. 7-8).

As a young man Wyeth first began experimenting with watercolor and abstraction in Maine, finding a freedom of expression in direct contrast to the strict formal artistic training from he had received from his father. Wyeth felt watercolor revealed an elusive side of nature, and allowed him to instantaneously record the world around him as he saw it.  In his 1976 interview with Thomas Hoving he stated, "with watercolor you can pick up the atmosphere, the temperature, the sound of snow sifting through the trees or over the ice of a small pond, or against a windowpane ... watercolor shouldn't behave, it simply shouldn't." As Wyeth's career progressed, the bold, fluid watercolors he had painted in his youth gave way to starker, more tightly executed works like Sea Level.  

Betsy encouraged her husband to create compositions of greater simplicity and work with more muted colors.  The cool palette of Sea Level is typical of Wyeth's Maine pictures in which he used variations of greens and blues, as opposed to the neutral earth tones found in his Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania works. While Wyeth evolved stylistically over the years, his subject matter remained constant.  Dividing his time between his homes in Chadd's Ford and Cushing, the landscapes and people of each place were featured prominently in his paintings.   Adam Weinberg notes, "As [Wyeth] has recounted time and again, his family history and personal experience in each place inflected his feeling for the land itself.  'I couldn't get any of this feeling without a very strong connection for a place ... it's that I was born here, lived here—things have meaning for me"' (Unknown Terrain, 1998, p. 21).