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N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Sitter
Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth
My Mother
1929
36 1/4 × 40 1/4 in. (92.4 × 102.2 cm)
96.1.27
Bequest of Carolyn Wyeth, 1996
An extraordinarily influential presence in her son’s life, Henriette Zirngiebel Wyeth encouraged her son's earliest artistic endeavors. In return, he confided to her a career's worth of aspirations and frustrations in hundreds of letters written from 1902 until her death in 1925. In this posthumous portrait, N. C. Wyeth depicts his mother in the kitchen of his boyhood home in Needham, Massachusetts. The figure outside the window is Wyeth's maternal grandfather, walking the path to his house next door, seen at the right in the painting. The skewed perspective of walls and tabletop and his mother’s indistinct features suggest dream imagery created from intense emotion.
Not On View