The Cloisters

Andrew WyethWW-1949-013271

1949·Tempera on board·78.7 × 104.1 cm (31 × 41 in.)

<p>Andrew Wyeth often sought to capture his emotional response to an intriguing place by honing, refining, and crystallizing his initial impressions into hushed, haunting final compositions. <em>The Cloisters</em> depicts a small, empty room at the Ephrata Cloister, located near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles from Wyeth’s home in Chadds Ford. It was the seat of the German Seventh-day Baptists, an early American religious colony that had disbanded in 1934 and was being restored as a historic landmark when Wyeth visited with his aunt Elizabeth in 1949. Wyeth’s early studies portrayed Elizabeth in the room, but he eliminated her figure and increasingly abstracted the space to focus on the play of light against the muted brown walls. The bird, a chalk sculpture of the type produced by residents of the Ephrata Cloister, stands as a slightly surreal evocation of the history of the colony and Elizabeth’s one-time presence in the scene.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1949
Medium: Tempera on board
Dimensions: 78.7 × 104.1 cm (31 × 41 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Andrew Wyeth

Artist

Andrew Wyeth

Painting

Andrew Wyeth was born on July 12, 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Both son and pupil to his father, the successful illustrator Newell Convers Wyeth, he began studying art at a young age, as poor childhood health necessitated that he be educated at home. The Wyeth family alternated their time between Chadds Ford and the area of Cushing, Maine, and both locales feature prominently throughout the artist’s oeuvre. Wyeth showed an early aptitude for painting, and was given his first solo exhibition by the Macbeth Gallery in New York City in 1937 at the age of twenty; showing mostly works done in watercolor on paper, the show sold out. As his technique developed, Wyeth began to increasingly use tempera in addition to watercolor, a technique that has been credited with the severe, bleak, and even nostalgic atmosphere present within much his work.

Chadds Ford, PA, USA

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