Featuring Andrew Wyeth

Artist Andrew Wyeth has staked out two small corners of the world as his territory: the Brandywine Valley of southeastern Pennsylvania and the Port Clyde area of the Maine coast.

In these places he has explored the land in all seasons, as well as the people—his friends and neighbors—with considerable depth.

The inter-relatedness of land and people is the true subject of Wyeth's art, and Dodges Ridge is no exception. A barren and weathered hillside under a gloomy sky is crossed by tractor tracks. This sign of man, the cultivator, moving uphill is an optimistic symbol in a harsh and unforgiving landscape.

The tilted wooden stake with crossbar and tattered cloth streaming from it are probably the skeleton of a farmer's scarecrow. Their obvious religious symbolism cannot be ignored, however, and it is probable that the painting commemorates the accidental death of the artist's father, the noted illustrator N.C. Wyeth, in late 1945. Wyeth has often spoken of the loss of his father as the turning point in his life and his career as an artist.

Source: William Kloss. Treasures from the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

Pictured: Andrew Wyeth, born 1917, Dodges Ridge, 1947, egg tempera on fiberboard, 41 1/8 x 48 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.