Mask of Keats

Throughout her career, Carolyn Wyeth painted the objects and places for which she felt the most affinity—her studio, its contents, and her surroundings in Chadds Ford. In this work, she pays homage to English Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821), of whom she was a great admirer. Together, the roses and Keats’s death mask, placed carefully on the black cloth lying over the chair, read as symbols of both mourning and commemoration.