Description:

Wyeth Andrew

Christina's World (Signed) Paintings and Prestudies of Andrew Wyeth

 

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1982. Hardcover, 10.25" x 13.25". SIGNED First Trade Edition, First printing with the complete number line. A lovely association copy inscribed in the year of publication on the half title page to Andrew Wyeth's aunt, Elizabeth Bockius Sargant. Penned in Betsy Wyeth's hand,  "With love to Aunt Elizabeth, Christmas 1982. Betsy and Andy", with "Andy" in the artist's hand.

 

Gold cloth with blind stamping of the title to the front. Slight toning to the outer edges of the cloth. Near fine dust jacket with a small nick to rear panel.  The jacket is not price clipped and maintains the price of $75 on the inside front flap.

Interior near fine. 

 

This book is the companion volume to the highly regarded "Wyeth at Kuerners" the focus in this volume is on Christina herself. A brilliant selection of 105 pre-studies, 128 four-color illustrations and 28 photographs, 281 pages in all.

 

Why is it that Christina’s World evokes such strong feelings of nostalgia and disdain? Admittedly, the painting is somewhat kitschy. It presumes the viewer has a connection with the American pastoral—something already enshrined into the works of the 19th-century Hudson River School painters and their second-generation progencies, the Luminists.

 

Wyeth portrays the countryside as an escape, an arcadia. Viewers may notice the pinpoint details of Wyeth’s style, how he meticulously paints each blade of grass, hyper-focusing every detail—even the farm on the horizon. Christina leans toward her farmhouse. She longs to be home again; she wants us to come with her. We should not, however, ignore the more haunting aspects of Wyeth’s painting. Because we don’t see Christina’s face, we instead focus on the details of her body. We see grayed fingers, disheveled hair, a pink dress, and plain shoes. Questions may dog the viewer. Who is Christina? Why is she on the ground? Who or what is she looking for in the distance? Elements of mystery and intrigue might compel the viewer to look closer.

 

Unfortunately, a closer look at the historical and ethical contexts of Christina’s World betrays the painting’s initial delights. Wyeth was an idiosyncratic artist whose seven decades of work focus mainly on two families in two locations: the Kuerners in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and the Olsons in South Cushing, Maine. The subject of Christina’s World is Anna Christina Olson. She was one of the painter’s muses, appearing in several other artworks. Olson lived on her family farm in South Cushing, Maine, near Wyeth’s vacation home.

Although neurologists initially thought Olson had polio, they now believe she suffered from Charcot-Marie Tooth (CMT) disease, which causes weakness in the feet and lower leg muscles. CMT also hampers coordination of the fingers, hands, wrists, and tongue. As a result, Olson was handicapped from the waist down; she often moved across her family property by crawling. And as legend has it, Wyeth found inspiration for Christina’s Worldone afternoon when he observed Olson dragging her body across the field.


Justifying why he chose to paint Olson, Wyeth once stated that he wanted “to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless. If in some small way I have been able in paint to make the viewer sense that her world may be limited physically but by no means spiritually, then I have achieved what I set out do.”


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