Christina's World
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Christina's World |
Andrew Wyeth, 1948 |
Tempera on panel |
32 × 48 cm |
Museum of Modern Art |
Christina's World is the most famous work by American painter Andrew Wyeth, and one of the best-known American paintings of the 20th century. Painted in 1948, this tempera work is displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It shows a woman named Christina Olson, who had an undiagnosed muscular deterioration that paralyzed her lower body, perhaps poliomyelitis, dragging herself across the ground to pick flowers from her garden. She is the subject of a number of other paintings by Wyeth, along with her brother.
The house in Cushing, Maine, where Wyeth had been staying when he saw the scene that inspired the painting, still stands, although Wyeth took artistic license in its depiction, separating the barn from the house and changing the lay of the land. Known as the Olson house, it is on the National Register of Historic Places.
[edit] Reference
- Christina's World in the MoMA Online Collection