To Live Deliberately

For my pick this week, I decided to take a closer look at lot 1210 in our upcoming decorative arts sale on May 20th. It is a lot of three signed prints of Up From The Woods, a painting by Carolyn Wyeth. The print depicts the Wyeth family home and studio, peeking through the trees, setting the viewer back into the woods where Carolyn grew up. 

Carolyn Wyeth was the daughter of world renowned artist, N. C. Wyeth and his wife, Carolyn Bockius Wyeth. She was born in 1907 and raised at the home seen in this painting. The Wyeth home and studio is about five minutes from where I live now, in Chadds Ford, PA, sitting on about 18 acres of Southern Chester County beauty. Carolyns’ father began training her at the age of 12, setting a foundation with charcoal studies of 3 dimensional shapes and plaster casts. He taught her to know and become emotionally in tune with her subjects. She found her own artistic voice in her early 20’s and began to receive many awards and accolades. 

In the 1940’s Carolyn began teaching painting, primarily at her Chadds Ford home, and in Maine during the summers. Her nephew Jamie, son of well known artist Andrew Wyeth, began studying under her when he was 12. It was under Carolyn that Jamie found a love for painting with oils. He went on to have a very successful career of his own. Carolyn taught painting in Chadds Ford for over 30 years, and lived in the family home for her entire 85 years. 

Like the rest of the Wyeth painters, Carolyns work draws heavily from her life in Chadds Ford and the surrounding area. Of her work, the Brandywine River Museum published: “Her paintings reconstruct private moments from the past and often evoke an air of romance, remembrance and loss.” The painting Up From The Woods captures the solitude which Carolyn enjoyed through her life. Carolyn once said in an interview “I think all great stuff comes out of being alone. At the time you may feel lonely, but it’s doing something wonderful to you.”

by: John Burdumy