1992 Andrew Wyeth Pencil Portrait
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APPRAISER:
So, tell me, who is this handsome devil?
GUEST:
Oh, that's me.
APPRAISER:
I see there's a little bit of stubble on the chin. The beard's come on nicely.
GUEST:
Yeah, I've always had the beard far back. Well, started growing it right after that.
APPRAISER:
Tell me, what's the inscription say there now?
GUEST:
"For Andy Bell, from his friend Andy Wyeth."
APPRAISER:
Andrew Wyeth. So we have an Andrew Wyeth here.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
And of course, here we are in the Brandywine Valley. And before we got here, I was chatting with my colleagues, and who, who would we want to see most? One of the Wyeth family's.
GUEST:
Oh, for sure.
APPRAISER:
Because this is their backyard. They were from Chadds Ford, weren't they?
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
But you have a connection with them in some way, is that correct?
GUEST:
Well, I've known them since I was about 13 years old.
APPRAISER:
Right.
GUEST:
My mom had a restaurant in Chadds Ford, and he and Betsy, they used to stop in the restaurant. And then my father had an electric motor shop there. Anyway, we just hooked up a friendship. I've always known Andy, we used to snowmobile together. I took care of his cars, and we'd just become good friends.
APPRAISER:
And he did this drawing of you. When, when was this done?
GUEST:
He did that in '92. He was working on a painting, there was another boy posing for it. And he just did it without us, and he called the painting "Bonfire." He did several of them that day. He did that up in N.C.'s studio.
APPRAISER:
It's done in pencil, which is a medium that he favored.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
In the drawing, there's one or two little crease marks. Can you elaborate on how they came about?
GUEST:
Well, on almost all of his drawings, you'll see them little crease mark. He takes his hand and slings it across the paper, rips it right out of his tablet, and the drawing will fall right on the floor and he'll start on the next one.
APPRAISER:
And we have a photograph.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
Can you tell us something about this?
GUEST:
Well, here, he was painting "Stop!" And this is in my driveway. My wife took that photograph.
APPRAISER:
When was this photograph taken?
GUEST:
It would have been late April 2008, early May. They finished it May 10.
APPRAISER:
That's a painting called "Stop!" and it's you on your, your hog.
GUEST:
Yeah, that's... That's the last painting he did in Chadds Ford.
APPRAISER:
So the, the last one he ever did in Chadds Ford?
GUEST:
Mm-hmm. Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER:
So you were his last model here.
GUEST:
Yeah. I live alongside of Andy's studio. But you could tell time with him. 8:00 to 5:00 every day, painting.
APPRAISER:
You seem to have been very close and had a nice relationship.
GUEST:
We were close.
APPRAISER:
And the fact that he gave this drawing to you, and dedicated to you, I think says a great deal about your friendship, which is wonderful. He wasn't avant-garde like the Abstract Expressionists. He really kept the Figurative Realist tradition going, and took quite a bit of stick from the critics because of that, because they felt he wasn't really being avant-garde enough. But he stuck to it, and as often happens when you do that, found favor over time, and he's one of the most iconic American artists of the century. One of the things I always think of when we mention the name Andrew Wyeth is just exquisite draftsmanship. He could draw like nobody else. The photo doesn't really add, necessarily, to, to the value. It doesn't have any intrinsic value itself. But what it does do is, it reinforces the provenance. He did a lot of these sort of personal portrait studies, but this is a really nice one. And I, also, I think the fact that you were the last model that he used for that, that painting "Stop!" adds a little bit to the value. So at auction, I'm thinking $30,000 to $50,000.
GUEST:
Get out of town! (laughing) Cool.
APPRAISER:
Well, his paintings have now sold at auction for excess of $10 million.
GUEST:
Yeah? Well, thank you, Andy. He's sure missed around Chadds Ford. I know that everybody missed him. He was friends with everybody around there.
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