'Andrew Wyeth: Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush, Drawings, 1938 into 1966,' February 14–April 2, 1967, extended to April 9, 1967, no. 'Andrew Wyeth: Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush, Drawings, 1938 into 1966,' December 13, 1966–January 22, 1967, no. 'Andrew Wyeth: Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush, Drawings, 1938 into 1966,' October 8–November 27, 1966, no. Portraits like Anna Christina, Oil Lamp, Grape Wine, and Anna Kuerner are frank depictions of introspective subjects, as forensically observed in Wyeth’s tempera landscapes.Philadelphia. Idealism, or Realism?īeyond Christina’s World, Wyeth painted unsparing portraits of Anna Christina, her brother, and countless other figures at the fringes of rural society. Meanwhile, for critics it is an attempt to gloss over her condition in service of aesthetics. For sympathetic observers, the effect of the “hybrid figure” is a heightened awareness of Anna Christina’s condition, and an attempt to overcome reactions that might not initially see beyond her CMT to her personality. Griffin puts it in his essay on Christina’s World, “a hybrid figure”, describing her thin arms as if “emerging from a different painting, one that peels back the scene’s sunny illusion.”Ĭhristina’s Word continues to split opinions on its treatment of disability. Why, then, did he not model the entire figure on his wife? The Christina of the painting is, as Randall C.

To the unsympathetic viewer, Christina’s World could represent nothing more than kitschy, picture-postcard yearning for pastoral bliss – a criticism regularly leveled at Wyeth throughout his career.Īs with so many of Wyeth’s works, a closer inspection is required. The composition, while well-balanced and active enough to keep the eye moving from Christina to the farmhouse, barn, and back, is not groundbreaking. Her dress is “pink, like faded lobster shells that you find on the shore here”. In the foreground, a woman lies on the ground, propping herself up on her arms and facing away from the viewer, up the slope to the farm buildings.

Two plain farmhouses sit at the crest of a dun-colored hill in rural Maine. Christina’s World At First GlanceĪcquired by MoMA soon after its creation in 1948, Christina’s World bears the hallmarks of a classic “Wyeth.” It was this dedication to place and to realism that would invite so much admiration and an equal measure of critical neglect.

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