Jamie Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), a realist painter and one of the best known artists of the 20th century, was the son of renowned illustrator N.C. Wyeth and Carolyn Bockius Wyeth. He was the youngest of five talented children and was homeschooled due to poor health as a youth. Andrew received his only training from his father. The family read avidly, had lively discussions about nature and poetry, and because of N.C.'s celebrity, enjoyed visits from guests such as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Married to Betsy James in 1940, the couple had two children, Nicholas, an art dealer, and Jamie, the artist. In 1986, it was discovered that Andrew had secretly painted 247 intimate studies of Helga Testorf, a nursing aide to Pennsylvania neighbor Karl Kuerner, posing mostly unsmiling and passive. This 14 year body of realist work was controversial, yet Andrew took his father's advice and chose to work from his own perspective rather than for effect or to please the critics.

Jamie Wyeth (1946- ) is the younger son of Andrew and a realist painter. After withdrawing from school at 11 years, Jamie studied English and history in the morning and then joined other students in the studio of his father's sister, Carolyn, a well-known artist in her own right. In 1967, Jamie painted a memorable depiction of John F. Kennedy posthumously, and in 1968, married Phyllis Mills who had worked for Kennedy. He is well-known for attending to detail -- the texture of an animal's fur and the shine in its eye -- as with his famous work Portrait of Lady, a lone sheep staring at the viewer painted with signature bold use of yellow and orange. More experimental with techniques than his father and grandfather, Jamie often paints on corrugated cardboard for its rough striated effect and attaches three dimensional objects to paper.