Airborne
Date1996
MediumTempera on panel
Dimensions40 x 48 in. (101.6 x 121.9 cm)
Framed: 47 × 54 3/4 in.
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LinePromised Gift to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
Signedl.r.: Andrew Wyeth
Label TextA sense of unease in an immaculate world pervades Andrew Wyeth’s Airborne. The painting depicts the artist and his wife Betsy’s home on Benner Island, Maine. Wyeth painted Airborne in a contrasting palette of bright greens and dull grays that vividly conveys the site’s weather, tides, and seasonal rhythms. The floating feathers in the foreground add an element of surprise to the painting. The artist suggests here, as in many of his paintings, that something is taking place just beyond the frame. He invites the viewer to speculate what is happening to the ducks and geese who summer on the pond next to his house: are they attacked by one of the island’s resident eagles? Or, more mundanely, might the floating feathers simply be the molting of seagulls? It seems more likely Wyeth indicated unexpected, sudden violence here. In his world, reality is always mysterious and illusory: like feathers on a breeze, only momentary.
Inscribedverso, on u.r. panel, in white paint: Windblown
verso, on u.r. frame, in pencil: Windblown
