Andrew Wyeth, 1917 - 2009

Andrew Wyeth spent the summer of 1948 on Christina's World. While looking out of a window in the Olson house in May, he saw Christina dragging herself across the grass. She usually dragged herself to pick flowers from her garden to put in the house. Christina had a never-diagnosed muscular deterioration. It left her lower body paralyzed.

According to Dudley, Wyeth took "artistic license" by separating the barn from the house, omitting a stand of pine trees and setting Christina in a position that doesn't correspond to the precise lay of the land. Also Wyeth used his wife as a model. As a result, the skeletal arms of the fifty-five year-old Christina Olson are attached to the body of the thirty year-old Betsy Wyeth.

For those who have had polio, this painting has a certain resonance.