Jamie Wyeth - The Famous Realism Artist

Jamie Wyeth was fortunate to become a gifted portraitist probably because of the many painters in his family who must have inspired him. Oil is a medium which he seemed to love to use in his works. He did not take portraiture lightly and always spent many an hour with his subjects. Whether he painted an animal or a human, this Brandywine artist won appreciation for his portraits and succeeded in becoming well-known like his father and grandfather before him.

The art of the 21st century American painter James Wyeth - who loved the oil medium on canvas - is highly realistic. He is the artistic inheritor to the Brandywine School, consisting of painters who worked to portray the people, landscape and animals in rural Pennsylvania and Delaware. As artistic talent ran in the family and Wyeth himself had great technical talent, it was not surprising that he had his first solo exhibition when he was just 19. Though he has many critics, those who appreciate his work see it as timeless, bereft of faddism and based on classical canvas painting methods.

James Wyeth was born in 1946 in Chadds Ford, a Pennsylvania town. His father, Andrew Wyeth, was one of the most highly acclaimed artists in America, he received a number of honours and awards which include the 2007 National Medal of Arts. He was the first recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy in 1963. His father was also the first American artist to be elected to the Royal Academy of Britain. In 1987 he received a D.F.A. from Bates College. Andrew Wyeth was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest civilian honour given by the United States legislature.

After having had public schooling up to the sixth grade, Wyeth was tutored at home. For his art education, he would proceed to the studio of his aunt Carolyn. In 1963, Wyeth completed a painting on canvas of a local railroad worker entitled "Portrait of Shorty." That same year, he also made paintings of a man with severe learning disabilities and of a hermit quite advanced in age. In addition to making these two works translucent and giving them a polished surface, Andy had created them with accuracy that was part and parcel of the German oil on canvas technique of the 16th century. His portraits in the 1960s and 1970s portrayed his subjects' powerful humanity.

To Wyeth, painting portraits involved "not so much the actual painting, but just spending the time with the person, traveling with him, watching him eat, watching him sleep." Two of Wyeth's more well-known canvases include "Portrait of a Pig" and John F. Kennedy.

Wyeth's paintings of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy became one of the most well-known pictures of the public icon. To create this image of the President, he studied both films and photographs of the late President for as long as three weeks before putting brush to canvas. Following the exhibition of the 'Portrait of Pig', Wyeth painted other animal portrayals including "The Raven", "Angus", "10W30", "Islander" and "Newfoundland." In 1973, he painted "Pumpkinhead - Self Portrait", his self-portrait. He finished another light-hearted depiction of himself entitled "Pumpkinhead Visits the Lighthouse" in 2000.

In the year 1975, Wyeth took advantage of a tour to the Soviet Union to make the acquaintance of dissident artists. In 1976, the paintings which Andy Warhol and Wyeth painted of each another were on display at the Coe-Kerr Gallery. Wyeth currently resides in a lighthouse in Southern Island from where he produces a great amount of his current artworks on canvas.

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