Wyeth gained widespread acclaim when the Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchased what is widely considered his most famous painting Christina’s World, 1948, in 1949. It depicts the artist’s friend Christina Olson, whose body had been ravaged by polio, leaving her unable to walk, and, instead, have to drag herself with her arms. She is shown in a field in the process of pulling herself back to her Maine farmhouse. Typical of Wyeth’s work, it displays a heavily charged atmosphere that has been the subject of much interpretation. Although some critics have disparaged Wyeth’s work as being prosaic, he is still considered by most to be one of the great masters of American painting. As the artist himself explained his popularity once, “It’s because I happen to paint things that reflect the basic truths of life: sky, earth, friends, the intimate things.”

Along with MoMA, numerous other major museums count Wyeth in their collections, including the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland Maine; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Brandywine River Museum, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where the artist died at the age of 91, in 2009.

Courtesy Sotheby’s