Open Country

Beginning in the 1930s and continuing for over five decades, the Chadds Ford farm of Karl and Anna Kuerner was at the heart of Andrew Wyeth’s artistic sphere in Pennsylvania. Deeply inspired by the landscape and people, Wyeth created hundreds of drawings, watercolors and temperas depicting the farm and the Kuerners during these years.

In this view, Wyeth captures the sweep of the hill as it slopes down toward the valley. The artist was particularly drawn to painting the Kuerner farm in winter, his favorite season, which he described as the time when "you feel the bone structure in the landscape—the loneliness of it—the dead feeling of winter." Wyeth’s landscapes of that season are both placid in their silence and haunting in their feeling of desolation.