Relative values | 3 July 2010

The Wyeth Family: Three Generations of American Art
Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 22 August

There have been a number of painting dynasties in the history of art — families such as the Bruegels, the Bellinis and the Tiepolos — but fewer in recent years, British art having favoured the older brother syndrome (Paul Nash and John, Stanley Spencer and Gilbert). The Wyeth family is a glorious exception, an American family obsessed with realist painting, and an encouraging phenomenon to study. Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) is the best known of the painter Wyeths, and indeed the most talented. He is a remarkable artist, and it is his name that will probably attract many of the visitors to Dulwich. But this is not an exhibition of Andrew Wyeth’s work, so don’t come looking for one. It is both more and less than that.

More because it demonstrates the context in which he developed, by beginning the show with the work of his father, N.C. Wyeth (1882–1945), a great American illustrator and lushly dramatic painter; and less because there is simply not enough work by Andrew Wyeth to justify museum exposure of this collection. So where has this group of work come from? It all belongs to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection, so the strengths and weaknesses of the exhibition are the strengths and weaknesses of a corporate collecting policy. I concede that in these cash-strapped times it is difficult to keep raising the funding to produce a programme of hit exhibitions, and that other solutions — such as taking on a ready-made collection — begin to look exceedingly attractive. However, there are dangers in such a strategy, and disappointed audiences are a possible outcome.

That said, I enjoyed The Wyeth Family show rather more than expected: partly because N.C. Wyeth can be an interesting and compelling painter (as opposed to a successful illustrator, which is a very different thing), and partly because the couple of really good paintings by Andrew Wyeth are such extraordinary things. The visitor is greeted by N.C.’s striking portrait entitled ‘A Young Maine Fisherman’, but this image has been used so much in publicity that its effect has been slightly diminished. I was more interested by the group of four ship paintings hanging to its right, wonderfully vivid in colour and dramatic in handling. N.C.’s historical imagination was evidently lit by a lurid glow, and ‘The Phoenician Biremes’, ‘The Elizabethan Galleons’, ‘The Clippers’ and ‘The Tramp Steamer’ are strong meat. They reminded me a little of Frank Brangwyn (himself no stranger to the delights and pitfalls of illustration) in their unabashed richness of effects. Thoroughly enjoyable, if you’re not expecting something else.

The second room is less interesting, being filled with the kind of paintings that are made as illustrations and so look better in reproduction than they do in the original. This is an odd reversal: we are accustomed to real paintings looking better than they do in photographs; if they don’t, something is usually the matter with them. In this case, N.C.’s pictures make superb illustrations when reduced in size and set on the page in partnership with text, but as independent paintings they lack conviction. The subjects are too obviously dominant: a huntsman with a pointer or a man tapping sugar maples. It comes as quite a shock to see such a ‘modern’ subject as marines landing on the beach of a Far Eastern island, until you realise it was painted in wartime, in 1944, the year before N.C. died. The exception is ‘Eight Bells’ (1937), a truly memorable painting, which has more in common with the strange moodscapes of Edward Hopper, and includes a portrait of the young Andrew Wyeth crouching in the boat’s cabin drawing.

So we are prepared for the entry of Andrew himself in the next room, who is effectively represented by three pictures: a large free watercolour called ‘The Forge’ (1984), a still-life-cum-landscape entitled ‘Antler Crown’ (1983), and a really remarkable tempera from 1998, ‘Undermined’. Andrew achieves in these paintings what should be contradictory: remarkable lucidity and yet a sense of mystery. ‘Antler Crown’ is slightly surreal in its juxtaposition of Caribou antlers and a Christmas tree, but ‘Undermined’ is simply about a particular coastal landscape, and the subject is no more dramatic than the way that grass grows into a cliff or waves break on a beach. Much of its power derives from the textures Andrew coaxes from the tempera, and the subtleties of surface which result. A similar technical virtuosity can be seen in his portrait entitled ‘The Rebel’, but for some reason this picture leaves me cold, and ‘Undermined’ moves me.

In the fourth room is another large tempera, called ‘On the Edge’, depicting a figure standing on a cliff and gazing at the sea. Note the subtle mixes of colour and the ways in which the artist can enliven what might (in other hands) be areas of relatively barren rock. ‘Crossed Swords’ is a subject that N.C. might have painted, but a much more masterly piece of watercolour painting, a study in light and cast shadow, which somehow transcends the limitations of narrative to arrive at an unexpected formal beauty. In this room, too, are paintings by Henriette Wyeth (1907–97), N.C.’s first child, and thus Andrew’s older sister, and Peter Hurd (1904–84), who married Henriette. These do not add a great deal to the show. It would have been more pertinent to have included some work by Howard Pyle (1853–1911), who taught N.C. and such other all-American luminaries as Maxfield Parrish.

The fifth room introduces us to Jamie Wyeth, born in 1946 and Andrew’s son. He has a very different technique and vision, best exemplified in the impressive broken colour dapple of light on water in such works as ‘Entrance, Monhegan Harbor’ (1973) or ‘Morning, Monhegan’ (1972). In these watercolours, Jamie’s solid technique sustains the interest which is lacking in his later work. Two large paintings in the sixth and last room project a folksy quasi-allegorical mood which is a highly uncongenial and inappropriate note on which to end such an exhibition. It’s at this point that the visitor might feel cheated of more top-quality works by Andrew Wyeth. Let’s hope that this show will not deter another museum from mounting a large-scale Andrew Wyeth retrospective, which would surely be as popular as it would be revelatory, and also no doubt a source of much debate among the critical fraternity.

On a completely different tack, if you fancy the refreshment of a bold and inventive painterly touch, then visit the Redfern Gallery (20 Cork Street, W1, until 29 July) for a show of the latest oil on paper paintings of Annabel Gault (born 1952). Gault paints the landscape of East Anglia and New Mexico with passionate intensity, revealing the structure of her surroundings through strongly directional paint marks. The central room at the Redfern, hung with four of her large evocations of New Mexico, has seldom looked so good. I think they’re ravishing, and some of the smaller paintings are equally delectable. Highly recommended.