Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) was the son of a popular illustrator who taught Andrew to paint. Andrew was home educated at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, due to childhood ill-health.
Andrew Wyeth did not travel a great deal, but explored in
detail the farms, houses and land around two small areas of the eastern United
States, namely Chadds Ford and Cushing, Maine. He has been termed a
super-realist for his meticulous technique in depicting everything he saw with
great accuracy.
The painting Christina’s World (1948) can be seen today in
New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It shows a young woman half lying in a
hayfield looking away from us towards to a group of farm buildings on the
horizon. The chief feature of interest of this painting is the fact that her
arms and legs are thin and spindly, which we might assume is the result of
polio, which at the time of the painting was a terrifying and mysterious
disease from which many people died.
What we know today is that Christina was suffering from a
genetic wasting disease that rendered her unable to walk. Her name was Christina
Olson, and she lived at the house in the background. The artist had a summer
home next door to the Olson farm (near Cushing), and he was inspired to compose
this work on seeing her crawl across the field when he looked out of his
window.
Christina was actually much older than appears in the
painting, her torso being modelled by Wyeth’s own wife. However, that takes
nothing away from the poignancy of the image.
What we are see here is the girl’s struggle, not only to
make slow, painful progress towards the farmhouse that is her home, but also to
make a prosperous life for herself in the world that lies beyond the stark
horizon.
There is much that can be read into this painting that speaks
to us of the world that Christina occupies. It is clearly a lonely world, as
there is not a single living creature to be seen apart from herself. Even the
hay stubble, following the harvest, is brown and lifeless.
The field is large and slopes steeply away. However, it
appears that the hay has been cut more closely as she approaches the farm. Is
this therefore a message of hope, that the struggle to progress will get easier
in time? Do better things lie over the horizon?
It should be pointed out there is a certain amount of
artistic licence in this painting, given that Christina did not live alone and
lived a reasonably contented life into her mid-70s.
We are given an imagined perspective on life lived by
somebody in Christina’s situation in an understanding and unusual way.
© John Welford
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