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Jamie
Wyeth has since adolescence attracted considerable attention as a
third-generation American artist: son of Andrew Wyeth, among the
country's most popular painters, and the grandson of Newell Convers
Wyeth, famous for his distinctive illustrations for the classic
novels by Stevenson, Cooper, and Scott. "Everybody in my family
paints - excluding possibly the dogs," says
Jamie
Wyeth. And non-human subjects are a common theme: long a sensitive
observer of his rural surroundings, he paints livestock and other
animals with the same care and intensity he devotes to portraits of
people. He won precocious fame, in fact, with
Portrait of Pig, his picture of a pink and white sow. The
technical facility Wyeth showed even in his early work helps explain
why his first one-man show in New York happened when he was only 20,
and a retrospective in Omaha, Nebraska, occurred before his 30th
birthday. |
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James Browning Wyeth was born on July 6, 1946, in Wilmington,
Delaware, just south of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where he grew up
and still lives part of each year. His mother is Betsy (James) Wyeth;
he has an older brother, Nicholas. During childhood, Wyeth had
before him the example not only of his father and grandfather but
also two of his aunts, Carolyn Wyeth and Henriette (Wyeth) Hurd, and
his uncles Peter Hurd and John McCoy - all painters. With pencils,
brushes, and paints always at hand, the boy found it natural to use
them to express his impression of a book he'd read or a movie he'd
seen. He left public school after the sixth grade to be tutored at
home so he could devote more time to art. Having acquired most of
his own schooling from private tutors, his father didn't consider a
formal education necessary for an artist. After taking English and
history lessons in the morning, Jamie Wyeth would go to his aunt
Carolyn's studio, where for the first year he was assigned to
drawing spheres and cubes. Although bored by such disciplinary
exercises, he understood their value.
Indifferent to sports and games and undistracted by the social
activities that would have claimed his attention in school, Jamie
Wyeth spent at least eight hours a day studying, sketching, and
painting. His natural talent developed under the guidance of his
father, who in his own youth had the benefit of N. C. Wyeth's
instruction and encouragement. His father, he recalls, didn't
actually give him lessons, but rather let him work and then offered
constructive criticism.
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