One of Wyeth’s best-known works is his tempera painting Christina’s World, which is held in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York; it was painted in 1948, when he was 31 years old. The work depicts his neighbour, Christina Olson, sprawled on a dry field facing her house in the distance, in Cushing, Maine. Christina had a degenerative muscular disorder that rendered her unable to walk, and she spent most of her time at home. She was firmly against using a wheelchair and so would crawl everywhere, and Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when he saw her crawling across the field.
Christina’s World was first exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in Manhattan in 1948. It received little attention from critics at the time, but Alfred Barr, the founding director of the MoMA, bought the painting for $1,800 and it gradually grew in popularity to the point that today, it is considered an icon of American art. The Olson house itself has been preserved and renovated to match its appearance in Christina’s World, and because of Wyeth’s profile, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in June 2011.
Was looking at this on one of my art screensavers last night and remembering when I did a little research on it about six months ago. I couldn’t remember the details, so quite a coincidence to read this today. I’m not a huge fan of Wyeth, preferring more hyperrealistic painters or those who focus on light, but there’s something about this one that draws me. I had always felt she was looking towards the house longingly, maybe in the throes of some deep emotion. Finding out she was unable to walk changes how I ponder this painting. I couldn’t say how exactly. I’ve recently discovered a painter, Ivan Aivazovsky, that you might be interested in (you probably already know of him).
Ivan Aivazovsky! At first I thought I hadn’t heard of him, but actually now that I see that he’s the Russian seascape guy, I do know of him and his work, just without internalising his name. Something rings a bell that I might have even come across one of his paintings when my wife and I visited Crimea twenty years ago, though I couldn’t swear to it. Certainly his seascapes are impressive, surely one of the most difficult subjects to capture! Now that you have brought him up I will delve a little deeper…as I will incidentally with another new name that you brought up: Edna St Vincent Millay (I enjoyed her sonnet and I see that she was from Maine, the setting of course of Christina’s World — either serendipitous or it was that fact that inspired you to bring her up?).