ANDREW WYETH | Hans Herr House

The artist
Wilhelmina Bergland Stabler, 1950 (gift from the above)
Private collection, 2012 (by descent)
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2017

Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville Art Museum, Andrew Wyeth: Southeastern Collections, January-April 1992, no. 16, n.p., illustrated

The sheet is hinged to its support along the reverse edges. There are two very minor losses to the extreme upper left and extreme lower right corners. There is mat burn visible at the extreme edges and a natural rippling to the sheet overall.
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Executed in 1949, Andrew Wyeth’s Hans Herr House is a depiction of the oldest surviving homestead in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is one of three compositions that the artist dedicated to the subject. In all three iterations, Wyeth chose to depict the building set against a stark landscape, highlighting his interest in the aesthetic particularities of the winter season. “There are always new emotions in going back to something that I know very well,” Wyeth stated. “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it—the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it—the whole story doesn’t show” (as quoted in John Wilmerding, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures, New York, 1987, p. 182).

Built in 1719, the Hans Herr House is also the oldest original Mennonite meeting house in the Western Hemisphere and was initially built on ten thousand acres that were granted to nine Mennonite men in October of 1710. After construction in 1719, the building was home to Hans Herr, a Mennonite bishop, and his wife Elizabeth. The house remained in the family until the early 1900s when it was converted into a barn and storage shed. The Hans Herr House has been referred to as the most pictured building in Lancaster County.

Although not a direct descendant, Caroline Stoner Breneman (the artist's great-grandmother on his mother's side) married a member of the Herr family after Wyeth's great-grandfather died. They had one daughter, the famous "Aunt Mattie," a half-sister to the artist's grandmother.

This watercolor will be included in Betsy James Wyeth’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.