Andrew Wyeth Studio, Brandywine Museum of Art

In 1940, the young Andrew Wyeth and his new wife Betsy moved into a converted schoolhouse, just down the lane from where Andrew had grown up. The Wyeths would live – and Andrew would work – in this building for the next twenty years. In the early 1960s, the Wyeths acquired a new home, but the old schoolhouse remained Wyeth’s major Pennsylvania studio where he painted for another five decades.

The schoolhouse had already been used by Wyeth’s sister, Henriette, and brother-in-law Peter Hurd, as both studio and home. Wyeth’s sons, Jamie and Nicholas, remember a life integrated with art—visiting their father in the studio room, or having guests come to look at newly completed paintings that Andrew often hung in the kitchen. While Wyeth ventured out to select and sketch various motifs in the countryside, his major temperas were always painted in the studio.

The painting studio is presented almost as it appeared shortly before Wyeth’s death. Watercolor and tempera material give visitors a sense of the artist’s craft. The building still houses Wyeth’s art library and his extensive collections of military miniatures, costumes, and paintings by Howard Pyle. The high-ceilinged, sparsely-furnished former schoolrooms reflect Wyeth’s austere aesthetic and earth-toned palette. The tall, paned windows create details on the landscape that speak to the way Wyeth constructed some of his compositions; they also infuse the interior spaces with natural light that was so important to the artist.

Following Andrew Wyeth's death in 2009, Betsy donated the property to the Brandywine Museum of Art. During Wyeth’s lifetime, the studio was a very personal space, and the artist protected the privacy he felt necessary to his work. The artist posted a sign on the door that says: “I am working so please do not disturb.” Although the sign remains, we are now welcome to visit this very special place.