Friday, August 30, 2019

Phyllis Wyeth Tribute: James Wyeth at the Farnsworth

Rockland Maine's Farnsworth Art Museum and Wyeth Center has an exhibition of Jamie Wyeth's paintings celebrating his wife Phyllis Mills Wyeth who died in January of this year.  The Farnsworth website introduces it this way:
From the late 1960s onward, Phyllis Mills Wyeth (November 13, 1940 – January 14, 2019) was a muse to her husband, artist Jamie Wyeth. The selection of paintings assembled in this exhibition are a memorial tribute and reflect Phyllis Wyeth’s vibrant spirit and love of nature, horses, and her ever-present dogs.
I have long felt a personal connection to Jamie Wyeth -  beginning with his now iconic posthumous portrait of John F. Kennedy (for whom his wife worked); by his fascination with the work of Rockwell Kent (whose house on Monhegan Island he bought and lived in); then by occasionally spotting his boat at Georges Harbor where his mother and father lived in the summers; and by his gift to my late friend Jeff Armstrong of a painting "High Idle to Monhegan", a thank you note for ferrying his (long disabled) wife to their Monhegan home when she had missed the last ferry.
Jamie's boat headed out from a visit with family to mother Betsy
on Benner Island, Georges Harbor, Maine on July 1, 2019


Rockwell Kent - Greenland


Up the Creek with a paddle