I am pleased to present in this post an article by Varsha Ramani who attended my last workshop in the National Gallery of Art and prepared this beautiful written piece about Andrew Wyeth's "Wind from the Sea". Thank you very much Varsha for sharing this.



Andrew Wyeth (American, 1917-2009), Wind from the Sea, 1947. Tempera on hardboard, 47 x 70 cm (18 1/2 x 27 9/16 in.)

This painting is called ‘Wind from the Sea’ by the American artist, Andrew Wyeth. He was known for painting lonely rural landscapes, closely observed portraits and crisp interior still lifes in a realistic and detailed manner. His close friends and neighbors were usually the subjects of his paintings.

This painting is a scene from a room on the top floor of his friend’s house in coastal Maine and captures a moment on a hot summer day, when the tattered and transparent curtains are blown into the room by wind coming from the sea. The window almost serves as a frame and places the viewer inside the room. The sense of movement is evident in the painting and one of the main reasons I chose it was that it reminded me of the dry and sultry summers back home in India.

Andrew Wyeth had said that ‘… its all in how you arrange the thing… the careful balance of design is motion.’ And in this picture, the motion of the wind and the delicate movement of the curtains was the first thing that struck me.
In terms of color, this painting is not very adventurous. The hues used are mainly white, yellow-orange, green and some black. Though only warm colours have been used, the sense of motion in the painting and the black used for the trees in the distance gives the painting some cool spots. The colours are analogous with a basic analogous scheme of yellow and yellow-orange.

In terms of lightness, at the first instance the painting could be classified as being on the lighter side. However, this is because there is a lot of unsaturation. The tones are medium to dark (b/w image) except for the sky which is much lighter in tone. The dark window pane and the relatively darker interiors of the room emphasize the lighter landscape outside. Chiaroscuro is the contrast between light and dark. Hence in this picture, we can say that the contrast is provided by the lightness and not by colour or saturation.


 
What strikes me the most in terms of use of colour is the use of pure white in the edges of the curtain. Though the curtain in itself is a dull shade of yellow-orange, its edges are painted in bright white which makes me feel as though the wind is giving the curtain a new life! The tracks on the meadow in front of the window show that there are people in this lonely landscape yet in this moment, one enjoys the thought of being alone.

This is an article by Varsha Ramani