For nearly 25 years, Amy Morey worked closely with renowned American artist Andrew Wyeth and his wife Betsy, gaining intimate access to thousands of paintings and sketches that the public had never seen. Now, 15 of Wyeth's watercolor studies are being exhibited for the very first time at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, offering viewers a rare glimpse into the artist's creative process that he fiercely protected during his lifetime.
Wyeth was adamantly opposed to showing his preliminary work to the public. Whether it was because his artistic process was laid completely bare in these studies, complete with handwritten notes about color and other technical details in the margins, or because the quick sketches and plein air watercolors felt too personal and intimate, the artist consistently refused to allow these preparatory works to be displayed. "I like the studies, I like them better sometimes than the finished watercolor or tempera," said Morey, who curated the current exhibition titled "Along the Goose River: Andrew Wyeth's Secret Subject."
The breakthrough came in the early 2000s, toward the end of Wyeth's life, when Morey began cautiously including a few studies in exhibitions. "I put them up and thought, oh well, this is it, I'm going to be in deep trouble – I'm going to be gone," she recalled with a laugh. "He didn't say anything. But I think he had to warm up to it." Rather than continuing his explicit prohibition, Wyeth simply stopped actively preventing their display, marking a subtle but significant shift in his approach.
Currently serving as the associate collection manager for the Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center, Morey oversees approximately 7,000 of Wyeth's works and related materials housed between the Brandywine Art Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and the Farnsworth Art Museum. Part of her regular duties involves checking the countless flat file drawers where much of the collection is stored, ensuring that the various sketches and studies are properly preserved. It was during these routine conservation checks that the concept for the current exhibition took shape.
The show focuses on works created over nearly 60 years along a short stretch of the Goose River in Waldoboro, Maine, not far from the Wyeth family's Midcoast homebase in Cushing. Organized chronologically, the exhibition begins with what initially drew Wyeth to paint in this location: not the river itself, but an abandoned farmhouse on a secluded plot of land that possessed "an air of stately mystery not unlike the Olson House," according to Morey. "He develops a really deep relationship with the places he paints. And I would say this strongly applies to this group of paintings," she explained.
For years, Wyeth would visit this isolated location alone to paint, sometimes even sneaking inside the abandoned Hoffses house. The interior had been left as if the family who had owned and abandoned it might return at any moment. "The house was well-appointed, decorated with beautifully patterned wallpaper, a beautiful parlor stove and other furniture throughout the rooms, too," Morey noted. These interior studies, dating from 1947, reveal a different side of Wyeth's artistic approach compared to his famous, highly polished tempera paintings.
The watercolors from the Hoffses house are filled with intricate detail and visual intrigue, but rendered in a much more spontaneous and lively manner than Wyeth's meticulously finished works. In his famous tempera paintings, brushstrokes virtually disappear, creating an almost photographic precision. However, in these studies, the focus is entirely on the mark-making itself – loose, fluid renderings of liquid shadows falling across a fireplace hearth, collections of oil lamps and ornate clocks sitting on mantels, with details remaining deliberately fuzzy while somehow still capturing the essence of glowing glass.
When the historic house was demolished about a decade after Wyeth first discovered it, the artist shifted his attention to the surrounding natural landscape, particularly the river itself. In studies for numerous tempera paintings created over the following five decades, Wyeth seemed to transfer the same brooding, contemplative atmosphere he had captured in his Hoffses house paintings to the natural environment that surrounded it. As Morey observed, "All the intense emotion that he had and the feeling he had for the experiences there were transferred to the falls and to the Goose River – a part of it, not the whole river, just outside and immediately downstream from where the house had stood."
Morey has no reservations about displaying these studies now, more than a decade after Wyeth's death in 2009. She believes they are incredibly revealing, both emotionally and in terms of artistic process, making them genuinely exciting for viewers to experience. Now that these 15 watercolors are finally being exhibited publicly, they can gain something they never possessed while hidden away in storage: an audience. This represents a crucial final element in the artistic process that Wyeth actually cherished.
"I remember Andrew, when he was alive, he would come in, and he was always especially excited when he had a painting he just brought in and got in the frame and went up on the wall," Morey recalled fondly. "He'd want to know what people asked, what they said. He was just very interested in people's reactions, and I think he was always hoping that somebody would add some information that he hadn't thought about." The exhibition "Along the Goose River: Andrew Wyeth's Secret Subject" will remain on display at the Farnsworth Art Museum through April 19, 2026, finally allowing these long-hidden works to fulfill their creator's desire for public engagement and interpretation.
