DescriptionThe New Britain painting depicts the interior of an abandoned barn that was owned by farmer John McVey, whose land adjoined Wyeths'Chadds Ford property. Most of the composition is dedicated to the description of wild hay and the beams of sunlight playing upon the weathered rafters and stalls. When first exhibited at New York's Macbeth Gallery the painting was praised for its brilliant handling of light and atmosphere, imaginative presentations of the objective world, and its masterful handling of the tempera medium. (1)
While the painting insists on the tactile qualities of the hay and the smooth boards and the warmth of the sunlight piercing the dusty atmosphere, it also contains a haunting note of melancholy in the old sled, just visible in the rafters, and in the long, covered, almost coffin-shaped wooden box. The enigmatic sled and box hint at a hidden narrative, at an explanation for the painting that goes beyond the palpable realities of texture and sunlight.
Death and decay is a major theme in Wyeth's works, both implicitly and explicitly. (2) Like "McVey's Barn", many of his pictures evoke the loneliness of vast open spaces or empty interiors. (3) Throughout the years, Wyeth has explained a number of his paintings with brief anecdotes, which sometimes answer, but more often provoke, questions about the unsettling mood evoked. Distorted space and strange elongated angles are a vehicle for emotion. Common or mundane objects, such as a bucket, basket, boat, or sled, come to symbolize people. Versions of "McVey's Barn" resurface in "Hay Ledge" (1957; Gallet Co. Ltd., Japan) and in "Rafters" (1985; United Missouri Banks, Kansas City, Mo.), in which the artist used stored boats to symbolize their owners and the passing of time, persons, and events relegated to memory.

MAS

Bibliography:
Jay Jacobs, "Andrew Wyeth-An Unsentimental Reappraisal," "Art in America 55" (January-February 1967), pp. 24-31; Wanda M. Corn, "The Art of Andrew Wyeth" (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973); Andrew Wyeth, "Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: A Conversation with Andrew Wyeth by Thomas Hoving" (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978); John Wilmerding, "Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures" (New York: Harry. N. Abrams, 1987); Andrew Wyeth, "Autobiography", intro. by Thomas Hoving (Boston: Bullfinch Press, 1995).

Notes:

1 . Margaret Breuning, "Revealing Anew the Magic of Andrew Wyeth," Art Digest 23 (November 15, 1948): 28.
2. Corn, "Art of Andrew Wyeth", p. 140.
3. John L. Ward, "American Realist Painting, 1945-1980" (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989), pp. 52-68; Greta Berman and Jeffrey Wechsler, "Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940-1960", exhib. cat. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Art Gallery, 1981), pp. 62-63, 77.

On View

On view