My consciousness for all things Wyeth has been heightened since viewing and writing about the Shelburne Museum‘s exhibit “Wyeth Vertigo” earlier this summer. In fact, that exhibit taught me more than I previously knew about N.C. and Jamie Wyeth — father and son, respectively, of Andrew.
So a recent article in the New York Times about Jamie caught my eye, as did the accompanying luminous portrait he made of one Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig in 1963, when he was just 17 years old.
(For copyright reasons, I can’t replicate the painting here, so you’ll have to check it out at the Times site. Jamie Wyeth’s “Comet,” right, is courtesy of the Shelburne Museum.)
Alongside Jamie’s portrait in the Times is a more conventional one of Taussig, from 1981, by Patric Bauernschmidt. And the difference between the two plays a part in a fascinating tale about permissible images of women — in this case, professional women — and how they have changed over a half century.
The story is also enlightening about the portrait-painting business itself, and how Jamie approached this commission. Not least, the article is about Taussig, who is no longer a household name but was famous in the 1940s.
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