“Evening at Kuerners.” By Andrew Wyeth, 1970. Brandywine River Museum. Done with dry brush watercolor on paper. Photo above by Paul Goldfinger from a museum reproduction. Click left to enlarge.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) grew up at his family’s home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He loved to explore the countryside near his house. One mile away he discovered the Kuerners Farm owned by a family from Germany. At age 15 Wyeth did his first painting of the farm, and over the next 70 years he created 1,000 works of art based on the farm and the Kuerner family.
This print is from the Brandywine River Museum. I saw this image there and immediately was drawn to it. I like to study paintings as they inform my photography. In this case I felt a sudden and startling kinship with Andrew Wyeth because had I done a photograph of Kuerners Farm, I believe I would have composed it just this way and at just that time of day. The light of early evening is “golden light” for photographers and painters.
Andrew Wyeth wrote about this image:
“There are few studies for this because that was the year that Karl was very ill. Many evenings with the light burning there quite late, I had a foreboding that this might be the end.
“I’d go over there evening after evening and just watch. I’d hear the water and see that light in Karl’s room, and I’d lie in bed at night thinking about that square house sitting in that valley with the moonlight casting such a strange liquid light on its side.
“The light in the window, which is pure paper, by the way, seemed to me to be Karl’s flickering soul. For me it’s a very emotional picture. I saw Helga for the first time when I was doing this.” — - Andrew Wyeth
AARON COPLAND. “Simple Gifts from Appalachian Spring” The album: An American Picnic