Over more than six decades, Kuerner Farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania inspired nearly 1,000 artworks in a wide variety of genres and media by Andrew Wyeth, including some of his most recognizable creations.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the transition of Kuerner Farm from a family home into a public site visited and sketched by thousands annually, the Brandywine (which owns Kuerner Farm) and Reynolda (itself the owner of an important Kuerner watercolor), have joined forces to co-organize Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth. This exhibition brings together some of the artist’s iconic Kuerner works like the temperas Karl and Snow Hill with masterpieces of the watercolor medium like Wolf Moon and First Snow, and some exciting works that are new to public display from private collections and the remarkable holdings of the Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, which is managed by the Brandywine as of 2022.
Kuerner Farm stands a short walk from Andrew Wyeth’s studio. Through many years of immersion in this landscape, walking and sketching and gradually earning the trust of the Kuerner family, the artist gained unusual access to the property, inside and out, and took sustained inspiration from the layers of this landscape, the evocative farmhouse at its heart, and the people who inhabited it. From this source material, he produced a remarkably broad array of work, including many of his major preoccupations from a long and productive career. The exhibition’s title comes from Wyeth’s own description of the power of the place. In reference to a 1957 ink study of Kuerners to which the artist returned some days later, Wyeth said: “The balance, the flash of that black thing, brought the image of the scene clear to my mind, and I recalled the marvelous amber color of the rich landscape and the lucid pond looking almost like the eye of the earth reflecting everything in creation.”
The dates and venues are as follows:
- Reynolda House Museum of American Art: February 13 – May 25, 2025
- Brandywine Museum of Art: June 21 – September 28, 2025
- Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens: November 7, 2025 – February 15, 2026 (pending)