ANDREW WYETH | ABOVE THE TIDE

Private collection, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, circa 1952

Coe Kerr Gallery, New York

Private collection, circa 1977 (acquired from the above)

By descent to the present owner

Ivy W. Dodd, "Art Along the Shore," Courier-Gazette, Rockland, Maine, August 1977, clipped

In Above the Tide, Andrew Wyeth provides a view into the life of Henry Teel, a local fisherman whom he befriended in Maine. While Wyeth's portraits did not always include a sitter, he often utilized objects to represent people in his art. Wyeth explained, “sometimes, when I do a painting with people in it...I have ultimately eliminated them, much to the horror of those who pose for me, because I find really that it’s unimportant that they’re there. If I can get beyond the subject to the object, then it has a deeper meaning” (Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic, Atlanta, Georgia, 2005, p. 65).

In his description of this subject as portraiture, Wyeth remarked, “Henry Teel had a punt…and one day he hauled it up on the bank and went to the mainland and died. I was struck by the ephemeral nature of life when I saw the boat just quietly going to pieces” (Ibid., p. 69).