CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/5/2022

Recently rediscovered drawings by Andrew Wyeth in 'Life and Death'

Drawn somewhere between 1991 and 1994, “Helen Sipala 2” is reproduced from Andrew Wyeth: Life and Death, published to accompany the exhibition on view at Colby College Museum of Art. Collecting a series of recently rediscovered and previously unpublished pencil drawings made all the more relevant by our ongoing experience of mortality during the pandemic, this volume represents an important new subject in Wyeth's oeuvre: his own funeral. “About two decades before his private funeral in January 2009, Andrew Wyeth set the stage for the solemn event,” Tanya Sheehan writes. “What he envisioned in more than fifty sketches was a winter’s day on Kuerner’s Hill, close to Wyeth’s home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and within sight of the location of the automobile accident that took the lives of his father and nephew. Heads bowed, faces serene, and hands clasped or resting on the coffin’s edge, Wyeth’s devoted wife and a small group of locals who served as models across his career would come together to mourn the aged painter." She concludes, "Ultimately it is my hope that Wyeth’s funeral drawings, when situated in the contemporary scene, can help Americans manage their own complex feelings about and vivid memories of death in the wake of 2020.”

Helen Sipala 2 (Funeral Group), ca. 1991–94. Pencil on paper. © 2021 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS). The Phyllis and Jamie Wyeth Collection