Familiar Views, New Perspectives: "Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm"

Familiar scenes from the paintings of Andrew Wyeth permeate the modern cultural landscape. They pop up in the most surprising places, for those who pay attention. The showrunner for HBO's Westworld, Jonathan Nolan, noted the inspiration for the main character Dolores came from Wyeth's famous artwork Christina's World. Snoopy, Charlie Brown's faithful companion in Peanuts, has a Wyeth painting on the interior walls of his doghouse. The Winslows had a Wyeth print on their wall in Family Matters, as did Mr. Rogers. The films that reference Wyeth's sparse landscapes, consciously or not, easily numbers in the hundreds. Perhaps my favorite surprise Wyeth reference is in the movie *batteries not included when the unsuccessful artist's girlfriend dumps him by saying, "But no, you've got to be the Andrew Wyeth of the East Village."

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), Evening at Kuerners, 1970, drybrush watercolor. Courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Wyeth. © 2025 Wyeth Foundation for American Art/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The new exhibition at the Brandywine Museum of Art, Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth, brings together some of those very familiar scenes with others which feature the same landscape of Kuerner Farm, located on Ring Road just up the road from the museum itself. Wyeth painted the farm through six decades in almost one thousand known artworks. "Kuerner Farm completely captivated Wyeth," said Allison C. Slaby, co-curator of the exhibition and curator of the Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, NC, which co-organized the exhibition. "In his depictions of the farm, we gain a sense of the Kuerner world in its entirety: the land, the hill, the pond, the house, and its inhabitants."

View of the gallery, including wallpaper recreated from the Kuerner's kitchen.

Wyeth's subjects tend toward the extremes of emotion, exploring loss, death, power, and the unknown. The landscape of Kuerner Farm began appearing in his works when he was a teenager, still under the watchful tutelage of his artist father, N. C. Wyeth. They include some of his rare early watercolors, featuring brighter landscapes and paint colors than those normally associated with the artist.

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), Loden Coat, 1975, watercolor on paper. Private collection. © 2025 Wyeth Foundation for American Art/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

In 1945, N. C. Wyeth was struck and killed by a train, along with his namesake grandson Newell, just up the road from Kuerner Farm. End of Winter, Study for Winter was the "First thing I did after Pa's death," Wyeth noted. It introduces the bleak winter landscape and muted tones that dominate the rest of the exhibition. Even the buildings and people of Kuerner farm are explored in terms of sharp angles and penetrating gazes.

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), The Kuerners, 1971, drybrush watercolor. Collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. © 2025 Wyeth Foundation for American Art/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

There are no hidden romances or secret smiles, rather a traversal of empty terrain on the way to pieces like Spring, where the body of Karl Kuerner, a man who fascinated Wyeth, lays melting into his own hill along with the last of the winter snow. The study for this piece is also on view, painted at Kuerner's own sickbed as he was dying from cancer. Anna Kuerner, in contrast, is shown constantly at work, standing in the kitchen, digging in hard ground, or revealed only by a bright light shining from a solitary window, where she is chopping wood late into the night, which inspired Wolf Moon.

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), Wolf Moon, 1975, watercolor. Collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. ©2025 Wyeth Foundation for American Art/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

"I hope we have given viewers the key to understanding this work," said William L. Coleman, Ph.D., co-curator of the exhibition and the Wyeth Foundation Curator and Director of the Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center. "Andrew Wyeth's complicated mode of realism is coming to be seen in terms of the body of modern art." This exhibition gives a close-up of one landscape, through the artist's evolving lens.

Coleman pointing out details of Woodshed (1944), one of the pieces that is too delicate to travel to the other exhibition locations.

Viewers are invited to make their own conclusions. Generations of students in art history classes have been asked to debate who is holding the empty ribbon in Snow Hill: is it the artist himself, the viewer, his dead father, or someone unknown? As more of Wyeth's works come into the public eye with the release of many previously unexhibited pieces, they provide perspective to the accompanying evolution of his carefully curated persona.

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), Snow Hill, 1989, egg tempera. Collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. © 2025 Wyeth Foundation for American Art/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth

On view at the Brandywine Museum of Art

Through September 28, 2025

Exhibition was previously shown at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art and will travel to its final third location, Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Oct. 25, 2025–Feb. 15, 2026

Find more information at Brandywine.org