Painter Andrew Wyeth dies at 91

American painter Andrew Wyeth, famous for "Christina's World," passed away Friday at the age of 91. The son of N.C. Wyeth, he was famous for his melancholy portrayals of the rural Pennsylvania landscape.

American painter Andrew Wyeth, who passed away Friday at the age of 91, was famous for his melancholy portrayals of the rural Pennsylvania landscape. He is seen here in 1997 on his father's farm in Chadds Ford, Penn.

Wyeth was one of the most popular and also most lambasted artists in the history of American art. His precise realist views of hardscrabble rural life became icons of national culture and sparked endless debates about the nature of modern art. He is seen here in 1964 in Chadds Ford, Penn.

This tempera called "Christina Olson" features the same Christina famous from Wyeth's best-known painting, "Christina's World." The low-key colors of Wyeth's work stem partly from his frequent use of tempera, a technique he began using in 1942. Unlike the oil paint used by most artists today, tempera produces a matte effect.

"The Liberal," a 1993 painting by Andrew Wyeth in drybrush and watercolor, was shown in 1996 at a Baltimore Museum of Art exhibition. Wyeth painted many portraits, working several times with favorite subjects, but said he disliked having someone else watching him paint.

Wyeth was born July 12, 1917, in Chadds Ford, the youngest of N.C. Wyeth's five children. One of his sisters, Henriette, who died in 1997, also became an artist of some note, and one of his two sons, Jamie, seen here with him in 2004, became a noted painter in his own right. His other son, Nicholas, became an art dealer.

Andrew Wyeth's 1951 painting "Trodden Weed" was displayed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of a 2006 retrospective. The retrospective drew more than 175,000 visitors in 15 weeks, the highest-ever attendance at the museum for a living artist.

Andrew Wyeth. "The Mill," ca. 1964. watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper. N.C. Wyeth, the only art teacher Wyeth ever had, didn't always agree with his son's taste. "Invariably my father talked about my lack of color," Wyeth recalled.

Wyeth received the 2007 National Medal of Arts from President Bush in 2007. Despite decades of acclaim, Wyeth remained a secretive man who prefered to work alone and rarely gave interviews.

In 1998, the Marietta Museum of Art hosted its own Wyeth exhibit, showing works of N.C. Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth. Here, a volunteer hangs a portrait Jamie Wyeth painted of his father, Andrew Wyeth.

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American painter Andrew Wyeth, who passed away Friday at the age of 91, was famous for his melancholy portrayals of the rural Pennsylvania landscape. He is seen here in 1997 on his father's farm in Chadds Ford, Penn.

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