Andrew Wyeth

(1917-2009)

On Her Knees 25 3/8 x 19 5/8 in. (64.5 x 49.9 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Leonard E.B. Andrews (1925-2009), Malvern, Pennsylvania, acquired from the artist, April 1, 1986.
Private collection, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, 1989.
Pacific Sun Trading Company, Wellesley, Massachusetts, November 2005.
Adelson Galleries, Inc., New York, by 2006.
Acquired by the late owner from the above, November 1, 2006.

Exhibited
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures, May 24, 1987-September 27, 1987, pp. 13, 119, 197, 208, no. 137, illustrated, and elsewhere.
Omaha, Nebraska, Joslyn Art Museum, Andrew Wyeth's Helga Pictures: An Intimate Study, May 4-August 4, 2002, and elsewhere.
Lafayette, Louisiana, The Hilliard Art Museum, University of Louisiana, Andrew Wyeth's Helga Pictures, April 21, 2004-July 21, 2004, pp. 60, 97, no. 41, illustrated, and elsewhere.
New York, Adelson Galleries, Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper, November 3-December 22, 2006, pp. 75, 124, no. 47, illustrated.
Palm Springs, California, Palm Springs Art Museum, Andrew Wyeth: In Perspective, October 8, 2011-January 22, 2012, p. 24-25, illustrated. (as On Her Knees Study)

Literature
A. Wyeth, T. Hoving, Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography, Boston, 1995, pp. 109, 167, illustrated. (finished work the present work is based on)
R. Meryman, Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life, New York, 1996, pp. 386, 446. (finished work the present work is based on)

The Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center of the Brandywine Museum of Art confirms that this object is recorded in Betsy James Wyeth's files.

The copyright to this work is reserved by © Pacific Sun Trading Company, courtesy of Frank E. Fowler and Warren Adelson.

Andrew Wyeth's On Her Knees executed in 1975 is arguably the most alluring and refined preparatory study the artist produced for his finished tempera painting of the same title completed in 1977. On Her Knees is a pivotal work in the development of his famed Helga Pictures, a series that depicts his favored model, Helga Testorf and is a deeply evocative and sensual image. When reflecting upon On Her Knees for his autobiography, Wyeth remarked "This is of course a passionate picture. You can feel the sexual passion-in the fullness of the breasts and the high cheekbones, the arms folded back, the color of the face, the enticing pubic hair." (as quoted in A. Wyeth, T. Hoving, Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography, Boston, 1995, p. 109) Though Wyeth purposefully infuses a sensual passion into the image, he maintained that depicting sexually charged beauty was not his primary intent. Instead, commenting to Thomas Hoving (1931-2009), "The heart of the Helga series is that I was trying to unlock my emotions in capturing her essence, in getting her humanity down." (as quoted in T. Hoving, Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2006, p. 15)

The Helga Pictures began in 1970 when Wyeth met Helga "Testy" Testorf, their neighbor in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania for the first time. Born in Germany, Helga met John Testorf, also a native to Germany and a naturalized U.S. citizen, in 1957 and the two wed a year later. By 1961, Helga and John were living in Philadelphia, where Helga worked for a tannery, but the couple soon moved to Chadds Ford where they would live a quiet life raising a family. Helga eventually took a position serving as caretaker to the elderly Karl Kuerner, another model and friend of Wyeth. In 1970, Wyeth was in the process of painting an image of Karl and Anna Kuerner's home and while doing so, he saw Helga for the first time. The following year, Wyeth asked Helga to model for him, marking the beginning of an extensive artist-model relationship. Forever known as "The Helga Pictures," Wyeth produced over 240 works from 1971 to 1987 done in tempera, drybrush, watercolor, and pencil portraying Helga, many of which including the present work depict her nude.

When Wyeth spoke to Hoving about the series, he recounted, "One day in 1971 I met Helga at the Kuerners'. She was married to Johnny Testorf who supervised the local gardens [Longwood Gardens] and was a friend of the Kuerners. She'd come over and help them in their chores...I was entranced the instant I saw her. I thought she was the personification of all young Prussian girls and she possessed all the qualities of the Kuerner girls. Amazingly blond, fit, compassionate. I was totally fascinated by her. God, I thought, I have to have her as my next model! The difference between me and a lot of painters is that I have to have a personal contact with my models. I don't mean sexual love, I mean real love. Many artists tell me they don't even recall the names of their models. I have to fall in love with mine—hell, I do much the same with a tree or a dog. I have to become enamored, smitten. That's what happened when I saw Helga walking up the Kuerners' lane. She was the amazing, crushing blond." (as quoted in Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper, pp. 12-13)

In On Her Knees, Wyeth depicts Helga kneeling on a bed covered with white sheets and her hands behind her back with her head turned, staring off into the imagined distance with a contemplative expression. She has her hair in distinctive braids and, despite the vulnerability of Helga's nudity that invites the viewer's gaze upon her body, she is confident in her stance and demeanor, making her a creature of beauty not to be touched. The present work varies slightly from the image Wyeth produces in the finished tempera of 1977, choosing to tilt Helga's head down and bring her knees closer together. For the exhibition catalogue prepared for the 1987 seminal exhibition of The Helga Pictures, Dr. John Wilmerding discussed the importance of the composition for Wyeth, noting "Maintaining an apparent rhythm of pictorial advance and return, during 1977 Wyeth took up a new pose with On Her Knees and modified an earlier one with Drawn Shade. In one drawing, he sketches her as if framed by the familiar window, her head intersecting the horizon, but then turns in the rest of the sequence to exploring the contrasts of her firm flesh with the softness of the sheets and mattress and of the surfaces of cream white with surrounding dark. (So fascinated was Wyeth with this pose that he painted at least three other pictures, depicting a different female figure—Heat Lightning, Winfields, and Surf—in 1977 and 1978.)" (Dr. J. Wilmerding, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1987, p. 29)

As a result of its erotic pose and undertones of sexual passion, the true ethos of On Her Knees was overlooked by viewers and critics alike when The Helga Pictures were revealed to the world. Wyeth remarked, "Most of the critics missed the freshness of this. It was painted with deep emotion; it's not a studio concept. After this, I'm not going to paint any more nudes. I've shot my wad." (as quoted in Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography, p. 109) Based on Wyeth's reaction to his critics, it was evident that many did not see how Wyeth countered the suggestion of sex in the composition with an artistic execution fueled by an emotional and spiritual strength possessed for his subject. Despite this, Wyeth considered On Her Knees to be one of his best, if not the pinnacle work of the series that demonstrates his full prowess as a figural painter of deep feeling, stating "To me this is the most passionate picture in the entire group." (as quoted in Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper, p. 74)

As is the case in many of Wyeth's figural works, the influence of Edward Hopper's (1882-1967) philosophies of observation and unembellished recording of the physical world is evident in the design of On Her Knees. Wyeth admired Hopper's mastery of light, plain designs, and the isolation of his subjects to emphasize their loneliness in the modern world. Anne Classen Knutson astutely wrote, "Wyeth's imagery may have been inspired by Edward Hopper's voyeuristic views of lone figures lost in thought or seen through or beside windows. Hopper is one of the few artists whose influence Wyeth acknowledges. Both gravitated to old houses and empty interiors, and both created frozen, haunted settings with a sense of suspended drama and nostalgia." (A.C. Knutson, Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic, exhibition catalogue, Atlanta, 2005, p. 76) An excellent example of this in Hopper's work can be seen in his painting Morning Sun (1952, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio) depicting a young woman sitting on a bed in a bare interior pensively staring out a window into the distance.

Wyeth, like Hopper, achieved success in creating images constructed on distant narratives that evoked a haunting solitude. In On Her Knees, Wyeth psychologically involves himself in the composition on a profound level while simultaneously maintaining a detachment from Helga, to masterfully create an image characterized by its intimate narrative, acute tension, and tantalizing sense of anticipation. Though Wyeth's feelings for Helga were strong, he always maintained a level of detachment from his models and appreciated invention and imagination alongside the realist principles of interpretation. Richard Meryman astutely wrote of the detached dynamic Wyeth maintained with his various models, noting "There was a kind of comfort for Betsy in her view that Wyeth's relationship with all models is ultimately detached and temporary. As she once explained, 'When Andy is going to begin a tempera, he sees a total play, a total situation. It's as though he's creating the role of Hamlet from first to last on the panel...he's becoming what he paints, the intangibles. He is the person.'" (R. Meryman, Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life, p. 311) Meryman's remarks align with the mentality of Hopper, who at periods imagined and inhabited the figure in his interiors disconnected from themselves and their environment to perfectly conjure the loneliness and isolation he seeks to portray—a defining image of twentieth-century life.

In Helga's isolation from the outside world depicted in On Her Knees, Wyeth beautifully captures her essence in a natural state. The present work provides a fascinating revelation into Wyeth's artistic process for the finished tempera, demonstrating both his heightened ability to formulate dramatic tensions between light and shadow and the careful decisions he made for Helga's pose in order to achieve the most thought-provoking image of her. On Her Knees remains a crown achievement in Wyeth's oeuvre of nudes. As Robert Hughes noted in the foreword to the exhibition catalogue, Andrew Wyeth: In Perspective, "To see one of Wyeth's nudes, in particular a depiction of the figure of Helga Testorf, whom he turned into one of the great 'presences' of the female American body, is to be placed in proximity to what has become one of the truly indelible icons of that body...You can't mistake her. No one could. She is not a glamour-girl, but a real body moving in real space in a real world. She has the inimitable beauty of sturdiness as do the objects and people with which Wyeth chose to surround himself." (R. Hughes, Andrew Wyeth: In Perspective, exhibition catalogue, Palm Springs, California, 2012, n.p.)