Skip to main content
Dating from 1957, Farm Pond is a loosely treated watercolor, a compositional study for a larger tempera called Brown Swiss. Across the center of the sheet of paper is the titular pond, marked off by short black verticals that define fence posts. Looming above is the cubic form of Kuerner’s farmhouse, punctuated with two chimneys and four dark squares representing the third-floor windows. Almost at the midpoint of the landscape is a stark and leafless tree. A loose and watery wash indicates a cloudy sky.
The cycle of Wyeth’s life was such that he spent winters in Chadds Ford and summers in Maine. Wyeth loved winter, and spent countless hours outdoors walking and sketching. “I love the bleakness of winter and snow and get the thrill out of the chill—God, I’ve frozen my ass off painting snow scenes! I’m taken by the bleakness—not the melancholy feeling of snow. My winter scenes differ from those of other artists in that they are not romantic. No! They capture that marvelous, lonely bleakness, the quiet, the chill reality of winter.” [2]
The Kuerner farmhouse held special fascination for Wyeth, an artist with a vivid imagination. Here lived the stalwart German and his slightly deranged wife. After the tragic death of Wyeth’s father at a railroad crossing, the artist gravitated toward older neighbors, both black and white; they became subjects of his paintings, surrogates for the father he never painted. Years later, Helga Testorf, Kuerner’s nurse and Wyeth’s model, described the house, a metaphor for the farmer, as a “great block of ice.” [3]
Watercolor was the ideal medium for Wyeth’s snow scenes, which often show the effects of a thaw. He explained, “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 perfectly expresses the free side of my nature.” [4] It was also suitable for working out visual problems; in Farm Pond the primary concern is the reflection—delineated by a steely blue swash—of the house in the pond. In the tempera version, Brown Swiss, the horizontality of the composition is extended to the right, and the house is pushed closer to the left edge. The reflection of the third floor is more fully developed, and two trees have been added close to the house. The biggest transformation, however, is in the elimination of any suggestion of snow. Instead, the terrain is a broad expanse of subtle shades of brown lovingly rendered in tempera and truly evocative of “lonely bleakness.”
Notes:
[1] Wyeth, with an introduction by Thomas Hoving, Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1995), 19, and Betsy James Wyeth, Wyeth at Kuerners (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976), vii–viii.
[2] Wyeth, Autobiography, 101.
[3] Testorf, interviewed in Andrew Wyeth: Self-Portrait—Snow Hill, video, Chip Taylor Communications, Derry, NH, 1996.
[4] Wyeth, quoted in Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth, interview with Thomas Hoving (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976), 33.
Provenance1957
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York. [1]
From 1958 to 1984
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC, purchased from M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. on October 31, 1958. [2]
From 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 28, 1984. [3]
Notes:
[1] Bill of Sale, object file.
[2] See note 1.
[3] Deed of Gift, object file.
Exhibition History1960
Andrew Wyeth
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (1960)
1962
Paintings And Drawings By Andrew Wyeth
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York, NY (11/2/1962 - 12/9/1962)
Cat. No. 104
1963
Andrew Wyeth, Dry Brush And Pencil Drawings
Fogg Art Museum; Harvard University, Boston, MA
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, NY; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
William A. Farmsworth Library and Art Museum, ME (1/14/1963 - 9/2/1963)
1966 - 1967
Andrew Wyeth--Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush, Drawings, 1938 Into 1966
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA (10/5/1966-11/27/66)
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (12/11/1966-1/22/1967)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2/6/1967-4/2/1967)
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (4/22/1967-6/4/1967)
Cat. No.104
1978
Andrew Wyeth In Southern Collections
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC (2/1/1978 - 3/31/1978)
Cat. No. 33
1979 - 1980
Exhibition Of The Works Of Andrew Wyeth
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (11/17/1979 - 1/9/1980)
Cat. No.6
2006 - 2007
American Watercolors: 1880-1965
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (7/1/2006 - 1/15/2007)
Published ReferencesExhibition of the Works of Andrew Wyeth. San Jose Museum of Art, 1979: 7, illus.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg 218, 219
DepartmentAmerican Art
Farm Pond (study for tempera "Brown Swiss")
Artist
Andrew Wyeth
(1917 - 2009)
Date1957
Mediumwatercolor on paper
DimensionsFrame: 20 5/16 x 28 3/8 in. (51.6 x 72.1 cm)
Image (Visible): 13 1/4 x 21 1/4 in. (33.7 x 54 cm)
SignedAndrew Wyeth
Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse
Copyright© Andrew Wyeth
Object number1984.2.15
DescriptionAs a child, Andrew Wyeth rambled across the rural hillsides of his native Chadds Ford, his imagination fired up by tales of pirates and Robin Hood, which he had heard from his father, the noted illustrator N.C. Wyeth. “When I was a kid,” Wyeth explained in his Autobiography, “and the rest were going to school, I was getting educated wandering through the cornfields and the woods.” One favorite destination was the farm owned by Karl Kuerner, a German immigrant who had fought against the allies in World War I. Kuerner, his fields, house, and livestock became the focus of many pencil sketches, watercolors, and temperas by Wyeth. When Betsy James Wyeth, the artist’s wife, compiled this corpus for her 1976 book Wyeth at Kuerners, she discovered 459 related works. By the time of his death in 2009, Wyeth had painted many more. [1]Dating from 1957, Farm Pond is a loosely treated watercolor, a compositional study for a larger tempera called Brown Swiss. Across the center of the sheet of paper is the titular pond, marked off by short black verticals that define fence posts. Looming above is the cubic form of Kuerner’s farmhouse, punctuated with two chimneys and four dark squares representing the third-floor windows. Almost at the midpoint of the landscape is a stark and leafless tree. A loose and watery wash indicates a cloudy sky.
The cycle of Wyeth’s life was such that he spent winters in Chadds Ford and summers in Maine. Wyeth loved winter, and spent countless hours outdoors walking and sketching. “I love the bleakness of winter and snow and get the thrill out of the chill—God, I’ve frozen my ass off painting snow scenes! I’m taken by the bleakness—not the melancholy feeling of snow. My winter scenes differ from those of other artists in that they are not romantic. No! They capture that marvelous, lonely bleakness, the quiet, the chill reality of winter.” [2]
The Kuerner farmhouse held special fascination for Wyeth, an artist with a vivid imagination. Here lived the stalwart German and his slightly deranged wife. After the tragic death of Wyeth’s father at a railroad crossing, the artist gravitated toward older neighbors, both black and white; they became subjects of his paintings, surrogates for the father he never painted. Years later, Helga Testorf, Kuerner’s nurse and Wyeth’s model, described the house, a metaphor for the farmer, as a “great block of ice.” [3]
Watercolor was the ideal medium for Wyeth’s snow scenes, which often show the effects of a thaw. He explained, “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 perfectly expresses the free side of my nature.” [4] It was also suitable for working out visual problems; in Farm Pond the primary concern is the reflection—delineated by a steely blue swash—of the house in the pond. In the tempera version, Brown Swiss, the horizontality of the composition is extended to the right, and the house is pushed closer to the left edge. The reflection of the third floor is more fully developed, and two trees have been added close to the house. The biggest transformation, however, is in the elimination of any suggestion of snow. Instead, the terrain is a broad expanse of subtle shades of brown lovingly rendered in tempera and truly evocative of “lonely bleakness.”
Notes:
[1] Wyeth, with an introduction by Thomas Hoving, Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1995), 19, and Betsy James Wyeth, Wyeth at Kuerners (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976), vii–viii.
[2] Wyeth, Autobiography, 101.
[3] Testorf, interviewed in Andrew Wyeth: Self-Portrait—Snow Hill, video, Chip Taylor Communications, Derry, NH, 1996.
[4] Wyeth, quoted in Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth, interview with Thomas Hoving (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976), 33.
Provenance1957
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York. [1]
From 1958 to 1984
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC, purchased from M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. on October 31, 1958. [2]
From 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 28, 1984. [3]
Notes:
[1] Bill of Sale, object file.
[2] See note 1.
[3] Deed of Gift, object file.
Exhibition History1960
Andrew Wyeth
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (1960)
1962
Paintings And Drawings By Andrew Wyeth
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York, NY (11/2/1962 - 12/9/1962)
Cat. No. 104
1963
Andrew Wyeth, Dry Brush And Pencil Drawings
Fogg Art Museum; Harvard University, Boston, MA
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, NY; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
William A. Farmsworth Library and Art Museum, ME (1/14/1963 - 9/2/1963)
1966 - 1967
Andrew Wyeth--Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush, Drawings, 1938 Into 1966
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA (10/5/1966-11/27/66)
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (12/11/1966-1/22/1967)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2/6/1967-4/2/1967)
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (4/22/1967-6/4/1967)
Cat. No.104
1978
Andrew Wyeth In Southern Collections
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC (2/1/1978 - 3/31/1978)
Cat. No. 33
1979 - 1980
Exhibition Of The Works Of Andrew Wyeth
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (11/17/1979 - 1/9/1980)
Cat. No.6
2006 - 2007
American Watercolors: 1880-1965
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (7/1/2006 - 1/15/2007)
Published ReferencesExhibition of the Works of Andrew Wyeth. San Jose Museum of Art, 1979: 7, illus.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg 218, 219
Status
Not on view