The woman who inspired the painting shared my sister's name: Anna Christina, which in itself is quite amazing. I am connected to the work in another way but I don't want to sway the conversation
andrew wyeth lived/worked 1 hour from my location. he (and his father and his son) are well respected in the philly area. their paintings are located here: http://www.brandywine.org/museum
Christina’s World ( on display at the Museum of Modern Art, New York ) is one of Andrew Wyeth’s most prominent paintings.
The woman crawling through the tawny grass was the artist's neighbour in Maine, who, crippled by polio, "was limited physically but by no means spiritually." Wyeth further explained, "The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless." He recorded the arid landscape, rural house, and shacks with great detail, painting minute blades of grass, individual strands of hair, and nuances of light and shadow. In this style of painting, known as magic realism, everyday scenes are imbued with poetic mystery.
I find her pose a bit desperate and animalistic somehow. It feels lonely. I know nothing of the painting so am answering your question before knowing more.
Abandonment. She looks helpless (and was) and so far from the house. I always feel as if someone should be with her or coming toward her. The landscape is barren looking, which lends a sense of melancholy to me. My daughter bought a print back from a trip to NY as she thought I'd like it, and I did.
I have a lovely copy of it in my office. I am a huge fan of Andrew Wyeth's and have many prints hanging throughout my home. (And have been lucky enough to visit the Brandywine museum near AnneMarie.) Some people think his work is dark and depressing; I find the opposite to be true. In every single one, I find there is a bit of light, that beacon of hope.
The responses here have been so interesting for me b/c I collect Wyeth art. This one was a gift to me, and although it is the least favorite of all the ones I have, I do find it interesting.
Enjoy your NY trip! I lived there but have not been back in many years now...
This painting is almost a cliche in America. People who don't look at art usually know what this is. So, for me, I'm bored. But Andrew Wyeth is a wonderful landscape painter.
I think Vivian means that it is a very VERY commonly seen painting in America. So people have stopped thinking about it, like we often stop thinking about images we see over and over again. (Vivian, I don't mean to speak for you! :) )
Creeps me out. I don't want that woman coming towards my house. (on the other hand I get the feeling this set in the great depression era and she's probably starving, so I feel bad that it creeps me out, but it does.)
I feel for you, John. There you are, asking a simple question and a fair share of your readers show off their knowledge instead. It was one of those things drummed into me at school (before sitting tests): Read the question, read the question... Rather than what you think the question is. Anyway, I know you don't like me lecturing. So here goes the bell.
Not that it's much comfort, what I "felt" was pity, all my motherly instincts kicking in. First of all the girl needs fattening (those arms are spindle thin), second she has broken her ankle in the middle of nowhere and, as no one appears to be home to come to the rescue, her twisted body suggesting she is pulling herself along. Though, in truth, my very very very first feeling - shows you the romantic I am - how wonderful when you find yourself in a meadow on a summer's day. On closer inspection, reality set in ... And is, as I have learnt since, and what an inspirational story it is, not that far off the truth of a remarkable woman's story.
I have always loved this painting, which to me once seemed comforting and nostalgic -- the quaint farmhouse, the dreamy lounging in the field. But then I read an essay that dissected the painting more closely -- the girl's desperate reach, the house's dilapidation, the barren brownness -- and realized it's not a happy painting at all! She wants OUT of there.
Oh, and I think I read that the model for the painting was handicapped, which is why she's lying in the field. She had trouble standing and walking. (Maybe was entirely unable to -- I'm not sure.)
This painting seems to come up a lot, and it's weird because it's never done anything for me at all.
There's a Terry Gilliam film called "Tideland that is based on a book. Both the author and the director later realized that they both (secretly) had this painting in their head when they were creating their art.
So it must be an emotional touchstone of some kind. I'm just too thick to appreciate some forms of art.
Lonely, lost, and sad. Coincidentally, my header picture this month is the prop room of Andrew Wyeth, his father, N.C. and his son, Jamie at their homestead in Chester County. (Part of Brandywine River Museum). Needless to say, his pictures are very popular here, especially in doctor’s offices and banks. Being a Chester County resident, I have a lithograph of one of his paintings, “After Picking”. That one gives me a comforting feeling.
Have you read the book 'a piece of the world' by Christina Baker Kline? It is a part fact part fictional retelling of the life of the woman who inspired the painting.
Makes me feel scared!. Why would a young lady crawl among grass has she been attacked or about to be so!..I no nothing of art, but would never crawl around grass alone!.
John I just read everyone comments super interesting. I didn't want my comment to seem like am alway walking around with a bad cloud above my head but I wrote about how the painting makes me feel.
Andrew Wyeth. Once a very famous painting, as famous as "American Gothic" (the farmer holding a pitchfork and his wife and/or daughter.) Judging by these comments, it's kind of fallen into obscurity. I think that makes me more melancholic than the painting itself!
I feel a little sad looking at it. I agree with the commenter above who said they felt uneasy by it. She is so far away and that reaching out makes me feel a bit melancholy.
"Christina's World" has always made me uncomfortable. It gives me the feeling that she is being viewed by an unfeeling by-stander who does nothing while she struggles. It is a very well known painting in the US and Wyeth one of the few 20th century painters many people can name. I am surprised by the art-viewing Brits here who are not familiar with it. I guess this shows how little overlap there is between American and English popular culture.
I grew up in Pennsylvania very near where the Wyeths were and went to the museum nearby. The work in these paintings is so intense and unpretentious that I am frankly quite intimidated by them. They are such private visions of someone else's life that I have always felt like a peeping tom! They do convey as well a very down to earth and real feeling of rural Pennsylvania. makes me miss my time there, though I don't miss the teenage years themselves...
I see strength, solidarity, independence and simple beauty. I like wyeth work and many years ago saw an exhibit in Jacksonville fl. How often does a person just take the time to sit in the world around them.
i love this wyeth. i used to see andrew in chadds ford often. this girl was crippled but never let it stop her. wyeth saw the beauty in her spirit and painted it.
Without reading any of the other comments and knowing nothing at all about the artist or the subject it absolutely creeps me out.
There's something about the way the woman is depicted and the angles in the way she's holding her body that really remind me of some terrifying Japanese horror films.
Coupled with the overall bleakness and barrenness of the landscape, and the flat subdued colours there's something unsettling in that "hackles-on-the-back-of the-neck FLEE FLEE while you SRILL CAN!" kind of way.
I am absolutely prepared to accept that seeing something represented on a computer screen vs seeing it in the flesh can produces totally different responses.
I always thought the pre Raphelites were massively over-rated until I saw an exhibition at the Tate and had my mind completely blown :)
According to Wiki, the woman was around 55 at the time it was painted and she most likely suffered from Charcot-marie-Tooth. I have this disease and I would also be unable to get across the rough ground except by crawling. I relate to the sense of having a long way to go and of being alone in that. I understand her drive to be independent and I know how it is to grit your teeth and do t hings through sheer act of will. Thanks for posting this one, John. I hope you enjoy it thoroughly when you see it in the flesh.
Desolate. But not because of the woman. It's the late summer barrenness and bleakness of an old farmstead that makes me feel like that. I've seen a few, been at a few, and the quietness and dreariness have clearly stayed with me! It's not a good kind of quietness; it's the lonely kind.
Christina and her brother were fiercely independent Mainers who lived together in poverty in that old house their whole lives. She was physically handicapped with withered limbs and got around the farmstead by dragging herself along the ground as you see here. (The distance from the house is somewhat exaggerated for art's sake.) She was middle-aged, not a girl at the time of the portrait. Wyeth was a friend and neighbor and painted Christina and the house interior many times. The picture reminds me of the many other old-time, tough, rural, fiercely independent, spirited Mainers, some still living, some long gone, I've had the privilege to have known. It reminds me to stop being so "spleeny" when I'm feeling sorry for myself and just get on with it as they did and do.
This painting makes me feel lonely. Alone with no real neighbors, in a giant field, no other houses in sight. I’ve always imagined her childless. The dark house in the distance is not a happy one.
“The Helga Series” A snippet of information. I admired his work. A multilayered artist who had a dark side some may have called it melancholy. The encircled family dynamics certainly an interesting read. Wyeth first met Helga Testorf in 1970, when she began working as a nurse for Wyeth’s neighbor and sometimes subject, the terminally ill Karl Kuerner. Wyeth’s wife, Betsy, oversaw the lucrative family business in every detail from documenting and even titling every last preparatory sketch or finished tempera to keeping a tight grip on the reproduction and sale of Wyeth’s oeuvre. Sometime in 1971, Wyeth began painting Helga in the sanctuary of the Kuerner family farmhouse. For the next 15 years only Wyeth and Testorf knew of the almost 250 works kept secret from the world and especially Betsy Wyeth, who was kept unaware by Wyeth’s continual production on the side of works for public consumption. Fifteen years of working essentially every day for as much as 8 hours a day is an extraordinary amount to time to spend on a single subject. Undoubtedly, “The Helga Paintings” are really about “love,” but whether they’re about love of art, love of the human form, love of a friend, love of a mistress, love of money (the root of all evil), or some or all of the above, I’d love to know. 
She looked up from trying to find her golf ball in the rough and wondered how the hell someone got planning permission to build a house on the eighteenth green.
This painting makes me feel only a bit melancholy, due to the barren landscape, and quite a bit encouraged, that a crippled gal could venture out and be in the world, not hidden away. Courageous and strong! She pulled herself outside and was looking at her world from a new perspective, and for that I feel proud of her spirit. I also feel that this is a triumph of a painting in that it portrays reality, not everyone's life is all hunky-dorry, and Wyeth was very good at depicting his surroundings and the people he knew, in the lives that they had. I like when artists paint things how they really are.
The woman who inspired the painting shared my sister's name: Anna Christina, which in itself is quite amazing.
ReplyDeleteI am connected to the work in another way but I don't want to sway the conversation
You already did. It is now easy to find out what the painting is and from where it comes. I wouldn't have known otherwise.
Deletei found out about it through a google search which you could do as well
DeleteHow does the painting make you feel, that's what I was after
DeleteYou added that later.
DeleteBy the look of your comments I had to
DeleteHa ha!!
DeleteThat's intriguing 😊
DeleteNever seen it before. It has an American Gothic atmosphere to it, but equally it could be in Yorkshire.
ReplyDeleteActually my own initial thought was "Is that Kate Bush?" - but it's not ruggedy-windswept enough.
DeleteAfter Kylie's comment, above, I feel I ought to recognise the work. Alas, no. :-(
ReplyDeleteandrew wyeth, "christina's world".
ReplyDeleteandrew wyeth lived/worked 1 hour from my location. he (and his father and his son) are well respected in the philly area. their paintings are located here: http://www.brandywine.org/museum
Christinas world,art museuem New york.1948,Andrew Wyeth.
ReplyDeleteI shall be seeing her shortly
Deletelucky you!
Deleteyou are correct. The book, ' A piece of the world ' is just amazing and I'd highly recommend it before you see the painting if possible.
DeleteI did not see anne marie comment when i wrote mine.
ReplyDeleteChristina’s World ( on display at the Museum of Modern Art, New York ) is one of Andrew Wyeth’s most prominent paintings.
ReplyDeleteThe woman crawling through the tawny grass was the artist's neighbour in Maine, who, crippled by polio, "was limited physically but by no means spiritually." Wyeth further explained, "The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless." He recorded the arid landscape, rural house, and shacks with great detail, painting minute blades of grass, individual strands of hair, and nuances of light and shadow. In this style of painting, known as magic realism, everyday scenes are imbued with poetic mystery.
To make my own proper response I would need to see the canvas in The Museum of Modern Art and not a tiny representation of it in a Welsh blogpost.
DeleteIt takes your breath away when you see it. I shall be seeing it again very soon
DeleteI find her pose a bit desperate and animalistic somehow. It feels lonely. I know nothing of the painting so am answering your question before knowing more.
ReplyDeleteYou have some clever readers who know the work. I don't like it much.
ReplyDeleteAbandonment. She looks helpless (and was) and so far from the house. I always feel as if someone should be with her or coming toward her. The landscape is barren looking, which lends a sense of melancholy to me. My daughter bought a print back from a trip to NY as she thought I'd like it, and I did.
ReplyDeleteShe crawled everywhere and was incredibly independent for a long time
DeleteJohn, how does it make you feel?
ReplyDeleteEvery time I see it. I see something new . Longing.melancholy.hope.independence
DeleteUneasy.
ReplyDeleteYes that was my first impression
DeleteI have a lovely copy of it in my office. I am a huge fan of Andrew Wyeth's and have many prints hanging throughout my home. (And have been lucky enough to visit the Brandywine museum near AnneMarie.) Some people think his work is dark and depressing; I find the opposite to be true. In every single one, I find there is a bit of light, that beacon of hope.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago, we walked around an insignificant corner of the museum of modern art and there it was! I was struck my it's raw beauty
DeleteThe responses here have been so interesting for me b/c I collect Wyeth art. This one was a gift to me, and although it is the least favorite of all the ones I have, I do find it interesting.
DeleteEnjoy your NY trip! I lived there but have not been back in many years now...
It makes me feel mixed up.
ReplyDeleteBecause I feel nothing for it.
DeleteUneasy.
ReplyDeleteThe warmth of a late summer day, the prickliness of a hay field, and uncertain about the house in the distance.
ReplyDeleteThis painting is almost a cliche in America. People who don't look at art usually know what this is. So, for me, I'm bored. But Andrew Wyeth is a wonderful landscape painter.
ReplyDeleteYou need to explain why it is a cliche
DeleteI think Vivian means that it is a very VERY commonly seen painting in America. So people have stopped thinking about it, like we often stop thinking about images we see over and over again. (Vivian, I don't mean to speak for you! :) )
DeleteCreeps me out. I don't want that woman coming towards my house.
ReplyDelete(on the other hand I get the feeling this set in the great depression era and she's probably starving, so I feel bad that it creeps me out, but it does.)
As I think I've possibly told you before, it doesn't make me feel anything at all.
ReplyDeleteI would walk straight past it in an art gallery. I feel nothing, not my kind of art.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteYearning ...
I have seen it in person and it is powerful and will definitely bring some sort of emotions to anyone ...
It makes me,uncomfortable I had seen it before and knew the story but I still don't like it
ReplyDeleteI feel for you, John. There you are, asking a simple question and a fair share of your readers show off their knowledge instead. It was one of those things drummed into me at school (before sitting tests): Read the question, read the question... Rather than what you think the question is. Anyway, I know you don't like me lecturing. So here goes the bell.
ReplyDeleteNot that it's much comfort, what I "felt" was pity, all my motherly instincts kicking in. First of all the girl needs fattening (those arms are spindle thin), second she has broken her ankle in the middle of nowhere and, as no one appears to be home to come to the rescue, her twisted body suggesting she is pulling herself along. Though, in truth, my very very very first feeling - shows you the romantic I am - how wonderful when you find yourself in a meadow on a summer's day. On closer inspection, reality set in ... And is, as I have learnt since, and what an inspirational story it is, not that far off the truth of a remarkable woman's story.
Thanks for the introduction,
U
I have always loved this painting, which to me once seemed comforting and nostalgic -- the quaint farmhouse, the dreamy lounging in the field. But then I read an essay that dissected the painting more closely -- the girl's desperate reach, the house's dilapidation, the barren brownness -- and realized it's not a happy painting at all! She wants OUT of there.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I think I read that the model for the painting was handicapped, which is why she's lying in the field. She had trouble standing and walking. (Maybe was entirely unable to -- I'm not sure.)
DeleteThis painting seems to come up a lot, and it's weird because it's never done anything for me at all.
ReplyDeleteThere's a Terry Gilliam film called "Tideland that is based on a book. Both the author and the director later realized that they both (secretly) had this painting in their head when they were creating their art.
So it must be an emotional touchstone of some kind. I'm just too thick to appreciate some forms of art.
Lonely, lost, and sad. Coincidentally, my header picture this month is the prop room of Andrew Wyeth, his father, N.C. and his son, Jamie at their homestead in Chester County. (Part of Brandywine River Museum). Needless to say, his pictures are very popular here, especially in doctor’s offices and banks. Being a Chester County resident, I have a lithograph of one of his paintings, “After Picking”. That one gives me a comforting feeling.
ReplyDeleteSad, just sad.
ReplyDeleteHave you read the book 'a piece of the world' by Christina Baker Kline? It is a part fact part fictional retelling of the life of the woman who inspired the painting.
ReplyDeleteThe first time i saw this image was in the movie Oblivion.... I remember it but i'm not very impressed by it..
ReplyDeleteSad. Without family, friends, hope, support.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMakes me feel scared!. Why would a young lady crawl among grass has she been attacked or about to be so!..I no nothing of art, but would never crawl around grass alone!.
ReplyDeleteSad, lonely, wanting something you can not have. Melancholy.
ReplyDeleteBeing a handicapped person I feel this way . Reaching out for what I can not have. Trying but everything seems beyond my fingertips.
cheers, parsnip
John I just read everyone comments super interesting. I didn't want my comment to seem like am alway walking around with a bad cloud above my head but I wrote about how the painting makes me feel.
DeleteREally sad knowing the story behind it.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Wyeth. Once a very famous painting, as famous as "American Gothic" (the farmer holding a pitchfork and his wife and/or daughter.) Judging by these comments, it's kind of fallen into obscurity. I think that makes me more melancholic than the painting itself!
ReplyDeleteJohn, Can't you please just block "Ursula" ?
ReplyDeleteWhat's with the hostility, BB? I thought, as your handle suggests, you were beyond beige.
DeleteHugs and hisses,
U
PS Come to think of it, BB, and sticking to John's original post and his question: How does that painting make YOU feel? Beyond the pale?
DeleteU
So near and yet so far. My feelings.
ReplyDeleteI feel a little sad looking at it. I agree with the commenter above who said they felt uneasy by it. She is so far away and that reaching out makes me feel a bit melancholy.
ReplyDeleteSad. Lonely. Expectant. Scared.
ReplyDelete"Christina's World" has always made me uncomfortable. It gives me the feeling that she is being viewed by an unfeeling by-stander who does nothing while she struggles.
ReplyDeleteIt is a very well known painting in the US and Wyeth one of the few 20th century painters many people can name. I am surprised by the art-viewing Brits here who are not familiar with it. I guess this shows how little overlap there is between American and English popular culture.
I remember reading the backstory and it made an impact. I try not to feel sad about it but I do.
ReplyDeleteLike something is just out of reach.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Pennsylvania very near where the Wyeths were and went to the museum nearby. The work in these paintings is so intense and unpretentious that I am frankly quite intimidated by them. They are such private visions of someone else's life that I have always felt like a peeping tom! They do convey as well a very down to earth and real feeling of rural Pennsylvania. makes me miss my time there, though I don't miss the teenage years themselves...
ReplyDeleteIt makes me feel uneasy, as though the person is trying to get away from someone to safety.
ReplyDeleteI see strength, solidarity, independence and simple beauty.
ReplyDeleteI like wyeth work and many years ago saw an exhibit in Jacksonville fl.
How often does a person just take the time to sit in the world around them.
i love this wyeth. i used to see andrew in chadds ford often. this girl was crippled but never let it stop her. wyeth saw the beauty in her spirit and painted it.
ReplyDeleteWithout reading any of the other comments and knowing nothing at all about the artist or the subject it absolutely creeps me out.
ReplyDeleteThere's something about the way the woman is depicted and the angles in the way she's holding her body that really remind me of some terrifying Japanese horror films.
Coupled with the overall bleakness and barrenness of the landscape, and the flat subdued colours there's something unsettling in that "hackles-on-the-back-of the-neck FLEE FLEE while you SRILL CAN!" kind of way.
I am absolutely prepared to accept that seeing something represented on a computer screen vs seeing it in the flesh can produces totally different responses.
I always thought the pre Raphelites were massively over-rated until I saw an exhibition at the Tate and had my mind completely blown :)
According to Wiki, the woman was around 55 at the time it was painted and she most likely suffered from Charcot-marie-Tooth. I have this disease and I would also be unable to get across the rough ground except by crawling. I relate to the sense of having a long way to go and of being alone in that. I understand her drive to be independent and I know how it is to grit your teeth and do t hings through sheer act of will.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this one, John. I hope you enjoy it thoroughly when you see it in the flesh.
Desolate. But not because of the woman. It's the late summer barrenness and bleakness of an old farmstead that makes me feel like that. I've seen a few, been at a few, and the quietness and dreariness have clearly stayed with me! It's not a good kind of quietness; it's the lonely kind.
ReplyDeleteChristina and her brother were fiercely independent Mainers who lived together in poverty in that old house their whole lives. She was physically handicapped with withered limbs and got around the farmstead by dragging herself along the ground as you see here. (The distance from the house is somewhat exaggerated for art's sake.) She was middle-aged, not a girl at the time of the portrait. Wyeth was a friend and neighbor and painted Christina and the house interior many times. The picture reminds me of the many other old-time, tough, rural, fiercely independent, spirited Mainers, some still living, some long gone, I've had the privilege to have known. It reminds me to stop being so "spleeny" when I'm feeling sorry for myself and just get on with it as they did and do.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me feel like that's me, and I will never have a home.
ReplyDeleteViewing the image has always made me feel a bit melancholy. Having, at some point, read the story behind the painting, I can see why.
ReplyDeleteThis painting makes me feel lonely. Alone with no real neighbors, in a giant field, no other houses in sight. I’ve always imagined her childless. The dark house in the distance is not a happy one.
ReplyDelete“The Helga Series” A snippet of information. I admired his work. A multilayered artist who had a dark side some may have called it melancholy. The encircled family dynamics certainly an interesting read.
ReplyDeleteWyeth first met Helga Testorf in 1970, when she began working as a nurse for Wyeth’s neighbor and sometimes subject, the terminally ill Karl Kuerner. Wyeth’s wife, Betsy, oversaw the lucrative family business in every detail from documenting and even titling every last preparatory sketch or finished tempera to keeping a tight grip on the reproduction and sale of Wyeth’s oeuvre. Sometime in 1971, Wyeth began painting Helga in the sanctuary of the Kuerner family farmhouse. For the next 15 years only Wyeth and Testorf knew of the almost 250 works kept secret from the world and especially Betsy Wyeth, who was kept unaware by Wyeth’s continual production on the side of works for public consumption. Fifteen years of working essentially every day for as much as 8 hours a day is an extraordinary amount to time to spend on a single subject. Undoubtedly, “The Helga Paintings” are really about “love,” but whether they’re about love of art, love of the human form, love of a friend, love of a mistress, love of money (the root of all evil), or some or all of the above, I’d love to know.

She looked up from trying to find her golf ball in the rough and wondered how the hell someone got planning permission to build a house on the eighteenth green.
ReplyDeletesad and lonely...which, thankfully, I rarely feel.
ReplyDeleteThis painting makes me feel only a bit melancholy, due to the barren landscape, and quite a bit encouraged, that a crippled gal could venture out and be in the world, not hidden away. Courageous and strong! She pulled herself outside and was looking at her world from a new perspective, and for that I feel proud of her spirit. I also feel that this is a triumph of a painting in that it portrays reality, not everyone's life is all hunky-dorry, and Wyeth was very good at depicting his surroundings and the people he knew, in the lives that they had. I like when artists paint things how they really are.
ReplyDelete