Andrew Wyeth

Dr. Margaret Irving Handy, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (acquired by 1963)

Acquired in 1977 by the present owner

Maine, Museum of Art of Ogunquit, Third Annual Exhibition: American of Our Times and Andrew Wyeth, July - September 1955

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, One Hundred and Fifty-Second Annual Exhibition of Watercolors, Prints and Drawings, January - February 1957

Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Fogg Museum; New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library; Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art and Rockland, Maine, William A. Farnsworth Library and Museum, Andrew Wyeth: Dry Brush and Pencil Drawings, January - October 1963, no. 13, n.p., illustrated

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Baltimore Museum of Art; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, Andrew Wyeth: Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush, Drawings, October 1966 - June 1967, no. 63, p. 46

Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, The Brandywine Museum of Art, The Brandywine Valley, June - September 1973

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth, October 1976 - February 1977

Altoona, Pennsylvania, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art; Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Plan for Art, and Pennsylvania, Allentown Art Museum, The 1981 Hazlett Memorial Awards Exhibition for the Visual Arts, May - September 1981, no. 24

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth, May - August 1998, no. 43, fig. 80, pp. 99 and 217, illustrated

Richard Meryman, Andrew Wyeth, Boston, 1968, p. 10, illustrated

Betsy James Wyeth, Wyeth at Kuerners, Boston, 1976, illustrated

Executed in 1953, Archie’s Corner is emblematic of Andrew Wyeth’s aptitude for realistically rendering Pennsylvania’s rural countryside. This pencil drawing depicts a local church in Wyeth’s hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania that preacher Linda A. Archie built in the 1890s. This church became the subject of many works in Wyeth’s oeuvre, with the title of this particular 1953 drawing noting the property by its affectionate nickname: “Archie’s Corner.” 

A detailed depiction of an aging church, Archie’s Corner perfectly captures the solitary presence of this community landmark as set against the sparsely rendered Pennsylvania background. Within the reaching limbs of Wyeth’s barren trees, the raw Pennsylvania landscape is laid bare in this work. In the spirit of capturing the terrain as he experienced it, Wyeth himself felt that “if you clean it up, get analytical, all the subtle emotion that caught you first goes sailing out the window” (Andrew Wyeth quoted in Richard Merryman, The Art of Andrew Wyeth, “Andrew Wyeth: An Interview,” p. 66). 

A prime example of Wyeth’s intimate devotion to rendering his local world, Archie’s Corner underscores this artist’s intense and dynamic use of pencil. Further testifying to its significance, the present work has been included in several major exhibitions of Wyeth's work, including Andrew Wyeth: Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush, Drawings at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1966 and Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1998, to name a few.