An Aesthetical Analysis of Winter 1946

Andrew Wyeth was a regionalist painter who was born on July 12, 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania to N.C. Wyeth and his wife, Carolyn Bockius Wyeth. Wyeth was the last of 5 children and was home-schooled due to having a bad hip and frequent mysterious illnesses. This meant that his only teacher was his father, N.C Wyeth. N.C Wyeth was a famous illustrator and illustrated great children’s classics such as Treasure Island and The last of the Mohicans. He took a large interest in his son’s education and taught him to draw before he taught him how to read. Wyeth worked as an illustrator under his father's name until he was in his teens and held a high regard for his father and other artists. Wyeth continued on in anonymity creating illustrations under his father’s name, something he did not have a passion, until his twenties. He then began painting watercolors that he described as “caricatures of nature.” Sadly, in October of 1945 his father and nephew, Newell Convers Wyeth II, age 3, were killed in an a car accident where they were struck by a train (Meryman). This jarring incident is stated by Wyeth to be the main factor as to what made him into the artist he became. Andrew Wyeth created Winter 1946 in his usual regional and realist style as a way to honor his father after his passing and to further convey his feelings through the subject, the title choice, and the color scheme.

Figure 1: Becky King Study, Example of Wyeth's early works

Wyeth is commonly associated with a combination of two styles: Regionalism and Realism. Regionalism, also known as American Scene Painting, is an art movement that occurred from the 1920s through the 1950s, reaching its height in prominence in the 1930s in the United States. During the 1930s, regionalist artists documented small towns and rural landscapes; some did so as a way to return to a simpler time away from industrialization while others wanted to make a political statement and lent their art to radical causes. Regionalism focused on rural scenes and rejected city life and modern industrialism (Regionalism). The main focus of these painting were mid-western architecture and figures. Regionalism gave the viewer a heartwarming view of the simple life in the rural United States (Regionalism).

Realism is described as a detailed and unaltered portrayal of contemporary life. Realism became a prominent movement in the 1800s. It was a response to Classicism and Romanticism. While those styles showed the lush, wealthy lives of nobility, realism showed the hard and “dirty” lives of the working classes (Realism). While Wyeth was often described as a realist painter he did not like this classification. He is quoted in an interview with Richard Meryman from Life magazine as saying “A lot of people say I’ve brought realism back- they try to tie me up with Eakins and Winslow Homer. To my mind, they are mistaken.” He did not, however, refute his classification as a regionalist artist.

Figure 2: Winter 1946, Focus piece of paper

Winter 1946, on the surface, is a very straightforward painting. It features a boy running down a hill with a minimal background of a fence. The boy is casting a long shadow, suggesting that is evening and has his hand outstretched like he is reaching out for something. The viewer knows that the setting is winter due to there being snow on the ground and the boy being dressed in a heavy jacket, boots, and a hat. On a basic level, the boy appears to be running home for dinner or from playing. However, when the painting is looked at on a deeper level and with a little knowledge of Wyeth’s life, the painting takes on a whole new meaning.

Wyeth often painted places that were close to him. He enjoyed painting the neighboring countryside that surrounded him in Chadds Ford and also in his summer home in Cushing's, Maine. The setting of this painting is the hill where the family tragedy of the deaths of his father and young nephew occurred. In the Life magazine interview, Wyeth revealed that the railroad tracks where his father and nephew died are just on the other side of the hill the boy is running down.The boy running away from the death is a physical representation of Wyeth emotionally running from his father’s death. Wyeth in a interview said that he was sick with guilt over not painting his father when he was alive and in an attempt to prove that he was a real artist like his father was, he painted Winter 1946 as a type of homage to his father.

While all of Wyeth’s later works use a similar color scheme, the muted colors present in Winter 1946 help to further express Wyeth’s emotions towards this painting. Since winter is often portrayed as a “grey” time, the palate used allows the viewer to understand that the painting is set in winter even without knowing the title of the piece. The painting also gives a hazy feeling to the viewer almost like the painting is being viewed through a cold fog.

  Until the death of Wyeth’s father in 1945, he was an aimless artist with a lot of potential and very little to show for it. Through Wyeth’s aesthetical choices of the painting, he presented himself as a person and his true abilities as an artist. Winter 1946 was his first attempt at “real” art as opposed to his earlier works in watercolor and was a vehicle for Wyeth to fully express his emotions over his father and nephew’s deaths. His guilt and anxiety over his father’s passing turned him into the artist.