Art: Less Is More

Fabulous old N. C. (for Newell Convers) Wyeth crammed his children’s-book illustrations with sunset skies, flashing weapons, taut sails, flowing tresses, war bonnets, redcoats and pieces of eight. Andrew Wyeth, his even more famous son, has gradually emptied his own pictures of all but the barest, palest and sharpest images. As against his father’s brocades, Andrew Wyeth’s art has the austerity of smoky quartz crystals; yet it is all the richer for that, and the more valued. Last week the Philadelphia Museum of Art bought a typically bare new Wyeth for $35,000. Though not all museums disclose purchase prices, Philadelphia Museum officials believe theirs was the highest price ever paid by any U.S. museum for a living American’s work.

The implied tribute was impressive. Though individual collectors have paid similar sums for Wyeth, a museum is in effect making a finding that its purchase has permanent value, must answer both to posterity and a board of trustees for the accuracy of its judgment.

A midwinter view out of a farmer’s kitchen window, the picture is titled Ground Hog Day (Feb. 2). Although it measures 40 by 40½ in., the tempera panel was painted with a miniaturist’s exactitude. The firewood outside the window carries a symbolic suggestion of the yule log, which European rustics burn as a magical sacrifice to start the failing sun northward. The low winter sun gleams on the logs, and sidles through the glass into the bare kitchen.