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| 2017 Photograph Dale DiMauro |
Earlier this Summer my wife and I visited the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. This year Andrew Wyeth would have turned one hundred, thus, the museum celebrated by assembling a strong exhibit of his paintings. As much as anything on display, I found the exhibit on his drawings fascinating.
This landscape drawing was done with such strong tonal values that it appears photographic at first glimpse. One can truly see where he pressed down hard on the paper. The shadows along the shore and those cast from the tree trunks give the viewer a sense of the mood of that day.
Many of these drawings or watercolor studies are the size of some of his finished paintings. Not only is the scale significant, but his draftsmanship was superb. For me, some of these more complete drawings are paintings in of themselves.
To think he drew outside on this scale as a plein air painter would do, is unbelievable. Speaking from experience, to lug around large sheets of paper out in the elements is no easy task. One display panel mentioned that Andrew Wyeth painted one hundred to one hundred fifty watercolors per year which over the course of six or seven decades is a quantity hard to comprehend.
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