Exhibition | Andrew Wyeth: Running with the Land

Apr 5, 2023 — Mar 3, 2024

Regarded as one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, Andrew Wyeth (1917 – 2009) launched his career in New York City in 1937 with a sold-out exhibition of his watercolors. His father and mentor, noted illustrator N.C. Wyeth wrote him a congratulatory letter on the occasion of his successful show, encouraging his son and accurately predicting his future, “You are headed in the direction that should finally reach the pinnacle in American art.”

For the entirety of his seventy-year-long career, Andrew Wyeth anchored his subjects in two primary locations: Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, his birthplace, and Cushing, Maine, his second home since childhood. The Museum’s collection captures Wyeth’s preference for painting intimate subjects that were tied to the homes established by his father. Wyeth drew inspiration from the distinctive characteristics and denizens of these locations, revealing universal traits in his depictions of landscapes, objects, and people.

In the lexicon of real estate law, “running with the land” refers to the covenants (such as right of way) that are tied to the property itself and that continue in force, regardless of changes in ownership.

Greenville’s Andrew Wyeth collection encompasses the full scope of the artist’s extraordinary career, including significant decade-by-decade examples, from the 1930s to the 21st century. Wyeth himself described it as “the very best collection of my watercolors in any public museum in this country.”