Andrew Wyeth is a puzzle to critics, but not to laymen. Conceding his extraordinary skill, some critics accuse him of fishing in a backwater; Wyeth's story. telling pictures have more in common with i Qth-than with 20th-century art. To laymen, who generally prefer the old-fashioned kind anyway, that does not matter a bit. What does matter is the plain fact that Wyeth's pictures make sense, call for no translation.
That puts the cognoscenti out of work. Ever since their turn-of-the-century brethren failed to gauge the force and direction of modern art, the critics, not to be caught again, have been resolutely seeking out new and strange varieties of painting to explain to the public. The modern-art bandwagon may never stop rolling, but Wyeth rolls blithely in another direction. And his back road may lead to a new turnpike.
This week Wyeth reached a resting place on his road. A ten-year retrospective show of his work opened in the Currier Gallery at Manchester, N.H., will soon move on to the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. A single painting by Wyeth can look labored and precious; an exhibition the size of Manchester's shows the man's steadiness and growth. It is bound to increase his already formidable reputation. At 34, Wyeth ranks among the realest of living realists.
Rich Childhood. At the outset, things looked dark for him. A sickly, spindly boy, Andy Wyeth was taken out of first grade after three months, never went back. He learned, a little reluctantly, at home, still has trouble spelling simple words. During the long days when Andy's brother and three sisters were away at school, he mused, wandered and played with tin soldiers. Storms of illness and the chill rain of solitude slowly nurtured his imagination.
Another nurturing force was his father, N. C. (for Newell Convers) Wyeth, whose illustrations for such books as Treasure Island and The Last of the Mohicans lit the eyes of generations of children. "My father," Andy says fervently, "was big in his feeling and the way he lived. At Christmas he used to play Santa Claus with electric lights all over him and practically come down the chimney. His studio was like his painting, loaded with stuff—pistols, swords, chests."
Andy spent his twelfth year with cardboard, scissors and paint, making a miniature theater and players for a performance of Arthur Conan Doyle's 15th-Century romance The White Company. The show, staged singlehanded for the family, opened Pa Wyeth's eyes. "Tomorrow morning," he told Andy, "you're going to start studying. Come into the studio."
Like the Renaissance painters who served early apprenticeships, Andy had the incalculable advantage of learning his craft thoroughly while he was young. No new-fangled progressive, N. C. drilled him day after day in drawing until the youth knew how to report precisely the shape and feel of what he saw. An . ordinary pupil would have gotten bored and quit, but not an artist-in-the-making.
As his health improved, Andy interspersed his work in the studio with high jinks outdoors. In Chadds Ford, Pa. (his home town), Andy took up with a