Andrew Wyeth

(1917-2009)

White Dress 15 x 23 5/8 in. (38.1 x 60 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-September 27, 1987, pp. 19, 191, 199, 208, no. 232, illustrated, and elsewhere.
New York, Adelson Galleries, Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper, November 3-December 22, 2006, pp. 118, 126, no. 81, illustrated.
Palm Springs, California, Palm Springs Art Museum, Andrew Wyeth: In Perspective, October 8, 2011-January 22, 2012, p. 26-27, illustrated.

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 White Dress is an exceptional and unique example from the artist's "Helga Pictures." In the present work, Wyeth paints two of his beloved subjects treated with equal importance—Helga and windows. As much as Wyeth admired Helga's beauty, he also had a lifelong fascination with windows, producing more than three hundred works on the subject exploring the visual complexities of their transparency, symbolism, and geometric structure.

While in the process of painting an image of Karl and Anna Kuerner's home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania in 1970, Wyeth met their neighbor, Helga "Testy" Testorf for the first time. Wyeth asked her to model for him the following year, 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. When Wyeth spoke to Thomas Hoving (1931-2009) about The Helga Pictures, he recounted, "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!...She was the amazing, crushing blond." (as quoted in T. Hoving, Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2006, p. 15)

In White Dress, Wyeth depicts Helga sitting in a chair with her head turned with a contemplative expression, presumably staring through the window into the distance. The sunlight that beams through the window highlights her profile and serves to direct the viewer's attention toward the natural beauty of her distinctive facial features and the characteristic braids her hair is arranged into. Wyeth emphasizes this focus by portraying her in a bare, gray interior visible only from the waist up wearing a pure white dress that covers both her arms and neck. While Wyeth successfully captures her essence through the use of these stylistic techniques, he also gives uniform attention to the window and the natural elements of beauty the architectural feature provides.

Wyeth had a lifelong fascination with the illustrative challenges windows posed, remarking on their complexities, "I really love painting glass, but you have to be subtle with the reflections. Just enough reflection can make the whole thing read visually. Too much reflection will destroy a picture with glass in it. If you overdo glass and reflections, they become a cartoon. And that gets boring." (A. Wyeth, T. Hoving, Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography, Boston, 1995, p. 145) As seen in Wyeth's other works incorporating windows, the contrast of color is confined within the grids of the window. A forested landscape blanketed by warm sunlight is visible through the transparent glass and the sunlight that streams through imprints foreshortened squares of light on the windowsill. While Helga's alluring features are soft in appearance, the window's are defined by its hard edges and ridged right angles. The resulting image that Wyeth produces in White Dress is one balanced by opposing vertical and horizontal elements and the parallel natural beauty evident between Helga and the window.