American Art & Impressionists (1605) June 3, 2018 EDT Lot 75

Estimate: $20000 - $30000 (plus Buyer's Premium) (AMERICAN 1917–2009) "NUDE: A DOUBLE-SIDED WORK" Pencil signed 'A. Wyeth'; also with 'Strathmore Paper Company' stamp in the upper right corner, pencil on paper Sheet size: 23 3/16 x 29 in. (58.9 x 73.7cm) Executed in 1973. Provenance: The Artist. Acquired directly from the above. Collection of Leonard E.B. Andrew, Malvern, Pennsylvania, 1986. Private Collection, Tokyo, Japan, 1989. Pacific Sun Trading Company, Massachusetts, 2005. With Frank E. Fowler, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Acquired directly from the above in 2006. Private Collection, New Jersey. EXHIBITED: "Andrew Wyeth: ," , Washington, D.C., May 24-September 27, 1987 (traveling exhibition), nos. 81 and 82. "Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper," Adelson Galleries, New York, New York, November 3-December 22, 2006, plates 32 and 34 (both illustrated in the exhibition catalogue). "A Collector's Passion: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, 1938-2004," Pollak Gallery, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, March 19-21, 2007. "Art of the Wyeth Family," Heather James Fine Art, Palm Desert, California, January 30-June 15, 2017. LITERATURE: John Wilmerding, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures, Harry N. Abrams, New York, New York, 1987, p. 86, nos. 81 and 82 (both illustrated). Joyce Hill Stoner, A Collector's Passion: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, 1938-2004, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 2007. NOTE: Andrew Wyeth, son of American illustrator N.C. Wyeth and father of artist Jamie Wyeth, is arguably one of the most famous American artists of the 20th century. Working in a realist style, he is best known for drawings and of his environs and the people who surrounded him. Wyeth's works of art were often closely associated with people in his direct social sphere. The present lot depicts Helga Testorf, Andrew Wyeth's neighbor in Chadds Ford, and very much his muse. Wyeth first asked Testorf to pose for him in 1971. Until his death in 1985, he is said to have made forty-five paintings and over two hundred drawings of her. Such close attention to one model over so long a period of time is remarkable, if not singular, in the history of American art; it offers the opporunity to see intertwined images of Helga's physical and biological changes, as well as Wyeth's artistic growth. The two various poses and features that Wyeth here depicts are a way of exploring Helga's different moods and aspects of her personality.