Nigel Havers chooses Adrift by Andrew Wyeth:
‘I was first introduced to Andrew Wyeth’s paintings by my wife, who knew him and his son Jamie, also a wonderful artist. Sadly, Andrew died just before I managed to meet him, but Jamie has become a great friend.’
‘It was he who introduced me to this painting and it made a profound impression. It is large and the rather melancholic tone is very moving. At first glance, I thought the fisherman was dead, but Jamie told me he was just sleeping–taking a break on that gently rocking, dark blue sea.’
‘Is the boat drifting towards those rocks hidden beneath the surface? Is a storm about to break or is the boat actually safely tied up out of sight? All Andrew’s paintings have these unanswered questions, which appeals to my sense of drama, but first and foremost, I am drawn to the wonderful effect of dancing light, for me always the most beguiling of artistic skills.’
Nigel Havers is an actor.
John McEwen on Adrift by Andrew Wyeth:
Andrew Wyeth was the youngest of the five child-ren of the American artist N. C. Wyeth, also a famous illustrator. Summers were spent on the Maine coast, the rest of the year in rural Pennsylvania, a practice followed by his son.
His father’s sociability and celebrity meant guests included the likes of Scott Fitzgerald and the Hollywood star Mary Pickford. Similar achievement was expected of the children, especially of Andrew, a sickly child who was educated at home by his father: ‘Pa kept me almost in a jail.’
Only the best was good enough. His father despised illustration compared with painting: illustration had to adapt to the practical demands of engravers and printers; instead of ‘inner feeling, you express the outward thought’.
True to his father’s instruction, Andrew was a dogged independent, an upholder of craft and a disdainer of fashion. Accordingly, he was marmite to critics. The American art historian Robert Rosenblum, asked to nominate the most underrated and over-rated 20th-century artists, named only Wyeth – twice.
It was typical that Wyeth’s favourite technique was egg tempera, as used in Renaissance frescoes and here. ‘It’s a dry pigment mixed with distilled water and yoke of egg… Tempera is something with which I build—like building in great layers the way the earth itself was built. Tempera is not the medium of swiftness.’
Adrift is the opposite of Wyeth’s American contemporaries’ enthusiasm for abstract Action painting and its self-absorbed legacy. It is a tempera tour de force.
In 1978, he painted an old man lying apparently asleep in a melting Pennsylvanian snowdrift. Here, he sets an old man adrift on the ocean. Has the mind been set free, or the spirit? Or both?
-
Chanel takes a cruise around Lake ComoThe last Chanel collection designed entirely by the atelier has been unveiled on the shores of Lake Como, in Italy.
-
'Tate Modern has exploded the canon of art history, and transformed the public’s relationship with contemporary art'Artwork by Louise Bourgeois and Salvador Dali, among others, will be on display for the Tate Modern gallery's 25th Birthday Weekender event.
-
'As a child I wanted to snuggle up with the dogs and be part of it': Alexia Robinson chooses her favourite paintingAlexia Robinson, founder of Love British Food, chooses an Edwin Landseer classic.
-
The Pre-Raphaelite painter who swapped 'willowy, nubile women' for stained glass — and created some of the best examples in BritainThe painter Edward Burne-Jones turned from paint to glass for much of his career. James Hughes, director of the Victorian Society, chooses a glass masterpiece by Burne-Jones as his favourite 'painting'.
-
'I can’t look away. I’m captivated': The painter who takes years over each portrait, with the only guarantee being that it won't look like the subjectFor Country Life's My Favourite Painting slot, the writer Emily Howes chooses a work by a daring and challenging artist: Frank Auerbach.
-
My Favourite Painting: Rob HouchenThe actor Rob Houchen chooses a bold and challenging Egon Schiele work.
-
My Favourite Painting: Jeremy Clarkson'That's why this is my favourite painting. Because it invites you to imagine'
-
The chair of the National Gallery names his favourite from among the 2,300 masterpieces — and it will come as a bit of a shockAs the National Gallery turns 200, the chair of its board of trustees, John Booth, chooses his favourite painting.
-
'A wonderful reminder of what the countryside could and should be': The 200-year-old watercolour of a world fast disappearingChristopher Price of the Rare Breed Survival Trust on the bucolic beauty of The Magic Apple Tree by Samuel Palmer, which he nominates as his favourite painting.
-
My favourite painting: Andrew Graham-Dixon'Lesson Number One: it’s the pictures that baffle and tantalise you that stay in the mind forever .'
