(American, 1917 - 2009)

Chestnut Tree

Alternate Title(s)

Kuerner Farm

Oil on canvas

1933

30 × 33 in. (76.2 × 83.8 cm)

2017.5

Anonymous gift, 2017

Not on view

Beginning in the 1930s and continuing through much of his long career, Wyeth obsessively painted the Chadds Ford farm run by Karl Kuerner, a WWI German soldier who moved to the United States in the mid-1920s. Wyeth was fascinated by Kuerner’s war experience and the two formed a relationship that would last until the farmer’s death in 1979. Wyeth was just sixteen years old when this painting—set on the Kuerner farm—was completed.