Henriette in the Orchard

Historically, this painting has been known in the Wyeth family as "Henriette in the Orchard," thus identifying the figure of the child as Wyeth's oldest daughter, Henriette (b.1907). The orchard was part of the Chadds Ford farm the Wyeths rented from April 1908 through March 1911. After purchasing his own land in 1911, Wyeth worried that four-year old Henriette’s budding sense of place would be disrupted. He wrote to his mother, "She had become used to the old place...she knew where the first violets appeared (she had visited the patch up in the orchard a number of times…in great anticipation); its pathways and byways were part of her tiny instinct. All these things were taken away from her, and she must begin over again." Wyeth’s deeply personal identification with the Chadds Ford landscape was becoming more and more intense, and he would nurture a similar sense of place in all his children.