Inside The Artist's Mind

Jamie Wyeth continued the family business, so to speak, when he took up sketching as a young child.

The realist painter known for his iconic portraits is the son of Andrew Wyeth, creator of "Christina's World," and the grandson of N.C. Wyeth, a great American illustrator. The Wyeth men are known as artists that replicate the world around them through the lenses of place and people, objects and animals.

A collection of Jamie Wyeth's work opens Saturday at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and will continue through early October.

The exhibition gives guests more than just a closer look at his oil paintings, most famous portraits and a variety of preparatory drawings. It lends an intimate examination of the artist as a whole, starting with a painting of his aunt Carolyn's studio (where he earned his artistic training) paired with the sketches he made there as a child and a watercolor portrait of young Jamie, made by his father.

"Those earliest drawings extend to the present day, so you get a real sense of the long arc of this artist's career," says Chad Alligood, curator at Crystal Bridges. Having such variety lends the audience perspective to Wyeth's evolution as an artist.

"There's a really amazing object in the first gallery, a collaborative drawing between Andrew, his dad, and Jamie. You get this sense of imaginative play and the sense of another artist coming into the Wyeth dynasty."

Like his father's work, Jamie Wyeth's paintings have strong regional ties, often with images of the Brandywine River Valley and other areas where he lived. But that's mostly where the similarity ends.

Andrew Wyeth's portraits are austere, tidy or tightly rendered, while Jamie's are "more psychological, more mysterious and more playful," Alligood says. "You have this sense of energy that runs through Wyeth's work that is quite different from his father's."

Jamie Wyeth's works are often awash with dark or even muted colors and are known to portray their subjects -- whether that's people or rams and sheep, dogs or pigs -- with empathy. The unique characteristic seems a product of his fastidious approach to portraiture.

In a 1997 interview with The Artists Magazine, Wyeth described his approach as one in which he spends as much time with the person, "traveling with him, watching him eat, watching him sleep. When I work on a portrait ... I try to become the person I'm painting. A successful portrait isn't about the sitter's physical characteristics -- his nose, eyeballs and whatnot -- but more the mood and the overall effect."

His most famous work is a portrait of President John F. Kennedy. The painting was done posthumously, making it a challenge for Wyeth to study JFK in the same way he studied other subjects' psyches. Wyeth did so by looking at photos, watching video footage and studying the Kennedy brothers and their mannerisms.

"He brought observations into a powerful portrait of a man who managed the country during a very difficult time of political upheaval," Alligood says. "The Cuban Missile Crisis was the signature moment of his presidency, and the way Wyeth captures that emotion and psychological intensity is really profound."

The 1976 portrait of Andy Warhol will also be on display, a remnant from the days of The Factory studio that throws back to Wyeth's early years in the artistic circles with other models, musicians, actors and debutantes.

Having the realistic rendition of Warhol while also displaying "Warhol's Nature" in parallel at Crystal Bridges gives guests the chance to see for themselves the stark contrast between two artistic friends whose style couldn't be more different.

"The portrait of Warhol is very realistic in the unflinching way it captures his deer-in-the-headlight stare," Alligood says. "Warhol's portrait of Wyeth was poppy, movie-starrish, vain, the way he was painting other celebrities at the moment.

"The totally different feelings, tones and moods of the artists' work are a great juxtaposition."

Not all of the portraits displayed are of celebrity subjects. Among the most powerful images is "Orca Bates," a painting of a teenage boy sitting on a mariner's chest, with the jawbone of Orca, the killer whale behind him. The model for the image was the son of Wyeth's neighbor, who was named for the famous beast.

Even here, we get a sense of Wyeth's empathetic touch.

"Orca has long, tousled blond hair, skin shiny with the power of youth and a sensitive look at a young man on the verge of manhood, discovery and adulthood," Alligood says. "He's able to capture that. He depicts creatures with verve and expression, with a realistic approach. It's remarkable."