Born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, in 1917, Andrew Wyeth learned to paint from his famous father N.C. Wyeth, who educated the Wyeth children at home, and from Sid Chase, who passed on his mastery of watercolor. Wyeth found early success in his career and continued painting throughout his life, concentrating on scenes from around his homes in Chadds Ford and Maine. He transformed the everyday into intimate moments rich in quiet imagination. Wyeth’s acute sense of observation, dedication to detail and inherent talent made him one of America’s most beloved artists.

Winter Carnival was executed in Chadds Ford during the latter years of Wyeth’s long career. During this time, he experimented with atmosphere and light using mainly cool colors. Washes of grays and browns in Winter Carnival create the isolated and barren environment surrounding the model, Ann Call. Wyeth even added white gouache surrounding the figure to depict a starker background than the white of the paper could provide. Call’s quiet moment of reflection is interrupted by lone tire tracks in the snow. Yet, even if she is being intruded upon, she does not notice and remains hypnotically entranced.

The present scene represents a departure from Wyeth’s much-publicized work with his previous model, Helga Testorf. Winter Carnival purposefully lacks the sentiment of the “Helga pictures” and is slightly macabre. Call was chosen by Wyeth because she claimed to enjoy lonely nighttime walks through cemeteries. In Winter Carnival, she is emotionally out of reach as she sits in the desolation and cold. Her icy eyes stare ahead, she sits erect, and her turtleneck and Venetian mask make her unreachable and aloof. While Wyeth’s inclusion of her disheveled hair adds a more human element, Call still portrays a sense of the otherworldly. Her mask lends her an air of mystery, and the viewer cannot help but be intrigued and haunted by her image.

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Christies