All work is by Andrew Wyeth, 1917-2009, American unless otherwise noted. 

 

The Philadelphia metropolitan area is a foremost center of realist and figurative art on the north American continent. 

 

This descends from the work of the Peale family: Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), his brother, his five sons, his nieces and at least one nephew.  The family left a  large record of the goings on of their times.

   

It also descends from the creation in 1805 by Charles Willson Peale and others of  the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a museum and private art school.

The oldest such institution in the country, it operates still.

 

The brush was passed to Howard Pyle (1853-1911), painter and illustrator, teacher of Andrew Wyeth’s father, N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), and Violet Oakley, Maxfield Parrish and Jessie Wilcox Smith, among others.

 

 

Trodden Weed, 1951, tempera on hardboard panel. 

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

The Brandywine Museum noted that the artist was recovering from a serious lung operation in 1951.  He would walk and walk in boots belonging to Howard Pyle, his father’s teacher.

A painting of the near-mystical importance ascribed to transmission and mentorship.

 

 

The brush also passed to the immense Thomas Eakins, 1844-1916, foremost American artist of his time, a life-long Philadelphian whose teachers included Jean-Léon Gérôme and Léon Bonnat in a Paris in whose nascent Impressionism Eakins did not seem to be interested.

 

Andrew Wyeth himself took up painting under the instruction of his father, N.C. Wyeth, a well-known illustrator. A sickly child, Andrew Wyeth was held back from school and was entirely schooled by his father. 

N.C. Wyeth was killed with a grandson on train tracks near his studio in 1945.  The accident was never explained.

The inspiration for the painting immediately below was a Wyeth neighbour,  Allan Lynch, running down Kuerner Hill near the railroad tracks where the artist’s father and his nephew were killed a few months earlier. 

Andrew Wyeth said the boy represented himself and the grief he felt after losing his father: “his hand, drifting in the air, was my hand, groping, my free soul.”  The hillside was his father’s heaving chest.

 

 

 

Winter, 1946, tempera on hardboard panel. 

North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

 

 

The death of N.C. Wyeth had a notable effect on his son’s art: the quality of his attention to his life changed and he became more thoughtful.  His palette darkened into the sophisticated monochrome for which he is best known.

 

——————————-

 

 

‘Apotheosis of the Family’ 

In 2025, Jamie Wyeth, grandson of N.C. Wyeth, organized the installation of this mural created by his grandfather in a newly constructed barn on his own land in Wilmington, Delaware in the Brandywine Valley. 

 

A Wilmington bank president commissioned N.C. Wyeth to paint “the story of thrift as it applies to humanity.  Importance of family and centrality of land.” It hung behind the tellers in a bank in Wilmington, Delaware for 75 years before being removed and stored.

 

 

 

Apotheosis of the Family, 1932. 5 panels.  Photos from the NY Times

N.C. Wyeth. Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

The artist, the father of Andrew Wyeth, depicts himself enormous in the center.  In life he was 250 lbs. His wife Carol holds a baby. 

They are surrounded by the tools and scenes of agricultural life.

His son, Andrew Wyeth is on the right, flaxen haired.  Andrew’s sister, Carolyn stands next to him although, in life, she was 8 years his senior.

 

 

Andrew Wyeth‘s reputation is based not just on his technical skill in the handling of  the media of his art

but also on his mastery of figuration, landscape and still life

and also on his rendering of a way of life – agrarian; anchored in William Penn’s guarantee of a haven for religious freedom – to which many are attached to this day.

 

—————-

 

The Wyeth Family 

N.C. Wyeth’s daughters, Carolyn and Henriette, were also artists.  As is Andrew Wyeth’s son, Jamie Wyeth.

 

 

Portrait of Andrew Wyeth

N.C. Wyeth, 1882-1945,  American. Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 This hangs in N.C. Wyeth’s studio, built 1911, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.  I don’t know the date.

 

 

 

 

My Mother, 1968, drybrush watercolour.

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

The artist’s mother,  Carolyn Bockius Wyeth, painted in ‘drybrush’ watercolour (most moisture is squeezed off the brush to create very fine lines).

 

 

 

Ann Wyeth in White, 1936, oil on canvas

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

Wyeth painted this portrait of his sister in oil, a medium he abandoned for tempera early in his career.  

 

 

 

 

My Sister, 1967, pencil on paper (?Carolyn)

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

 

 Betsy Wyeth (1921-2020)

 

 

Maga’s Daughter, 1966, tempera on panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

Betsy Wyeth married Andrew Wyeth in 1940 when she was 19.

She named all of his paintings.  She maintained his catalogue and arranged exhibitions. At her death, a large inventory of her husband’s preparatory studies under the aegis of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art was bequeathed to the Brandywine Museum and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine.

 

She had a large influence on her husband’s work which he recognized gratefully and sometimes chafingly. 

 

She introduced her husband to Maine where her family had a farm and  where she had spent childhood vacations.  In Maine Wyeth made many well-known paintings.

 

She it was who encouraged their neighbour and friend, George Weymouth, a member of the du Pont family, to establish the Brandywine Museum and Conservancy in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

 

She handled the shock of her husband’s 240 paintings (kept from her but not totally from others) of Helga Testorf with grit and grace. 

 

They had two sons, one of whom is the artist, Jamie Wyeth. 

 

 

 

Self-portrait, 1939, egg tempera on panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

 

 

Untitled, 1954 (self-portrait captured from a mirror); watercolour on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

Nicholas 1955, tempera on hardboard panel. 

Collection of Nicholas Wyeth.

One of two sons of the artist and his wife.

 

 

 

Detail of My Son, 1993, drybrush watercolour on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

Almost certainly Jamie Wyeth.

 

 

 

Nightsleeper , 1979, tempera on hardboard panel.  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

The Wyeth’s dog, Nell, asleep on a window seat in the Wyeth home.  On the left a gristmill.  On the right the Brandywine River

 

 

 

 

The Kuerners, Chadds Ford

 

Karl and Anna Kuerner migrated from Germany in the 1920s and finally settled on a farm which bears their name in the Brandywine Valley.  Anna Kuerner was homesick throughout. 

 

The couple gave Andrew Wyeth the freedom of their property for all the 60 years of their friendship and he spent many hours there painting and talking with them. 

It is also the site of the paintings made by Wyeth of Helga Testorf who nursed Karl Kuerner in his final illness.

 

 

 

The Kuerner Farm, watercolour 

Karl J. Kuerner, American born 1967. On display at the Brandywine Museum in 2024

The farm, a gift of  the Karl Kuerners,  father and son, is now part of the Brandywine Museum and Conservancy. It is also on the National Historic Monument registry.

 

 

 

Karl, 1948, tempera on hardboard panel

Private collection, Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico 

 

 

Karl’s Room, 1954, watercolour on paper  

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Often rooms stood in for people in the artist’s oeuvre.

 

 

 

 

Anna Kuerner, 1971, watercolour on paper

Private collection

 

 

Home Comfort, 1976, watercolour and pencil on paper  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

Anna Climbing the Stairs, 1975, watercolour and pencil on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

Anna Kuerner, 1971, tempera on hardboard panel

Private collection

 

 

 

 

The German, and detail, ink and dry brush watercolor on paper, 1975  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

The artist was fascinated by the WW1 stories of Karl Kuerner who had served as a gunner in the German army before immigrating to the United States.  Here the artist has painted his friend in uniform.

 

 

 

 

The Kuerners and detail, 1971, drybrush watercolour on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

This composition was one which evolved over time. We see how palpable was the hostility in this long marriage.

 

 

 

Night Cap, and detail, 1978, watercolour on paper (with some light interference)

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

 Details of Wood Stove, 1972, watercolour and dry brush on paper  

Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

 

 

 

The Kuerners Study (Anna Kuerner), 1971, pencil on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

 

 

Karl Study, 1948, pencil on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

 

 

Handlebar, 1989, watercolour on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

Andrew Wyeth had a number of muses.  Here are five.

 

The disabled (from a degenerative nerve disease) Christina Olson of Cushing, Maine, the exhibition of whose painting, Christina’s World, caused a sensation in New York in 1948.  The body in this work was  based on that of the posed body of the artist’s wife.

 

This painting was bought by MOMA, NY in 1948 and is said to be the painting most asked after by visitors. 

 

 Christina’s World, 1948, tempera on panel

MOMA, NY

 

 

Wyeth began to paint Christina Olson in 1947 when she was 34.  His last was twenty years later in 1967, a half year before her death.

 

 

Christina Olson sitting at the back door of the Olson home.

 

 

 

Detail of Miss Olson, 1952, tempera on hardboard panel. 

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Anna Christina, 1967, tempera on hardboard. 

Jointly owned by the Brandywine Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

 

The museum noted that this was the last portrait of Christina Olson and was painted a half-year before her death in January 1968.

 This and the death of her brother, Alvaro, one month prior, brought to an end three decades of the artist’s friendship with them.

 

 

 

 

Wind from the Sea and detail, 1947, tempera on hardboard panel. 

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC 

The museum noted that Andrew Wyeth considered this to be a portrait of Christina Olson. 

For the artist, this was also a portrait of the decline of the Olson home, an 18th century structure in whose attic this curtain hung.

 

 

 

Alvaro and Christina, 1968, watercolour on paper. 

Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

The Brandywine Museum noted that this for the artist was a portrait of both Christina Olson and her brother, Alvaro, her constant companion.  She died early in 1968 one month after his death.

 

 

 

Helga Testorf, a muse from 1970-1990, hired in 1970 to help an aging Anna Kuerner care for her husband, Karl, who had been diagnosed with leukemia. 

Wyeth’s paintings and drawings of Helga (240 in all) he executed in the Kuerner house in Chadds Ford from 1970 onwards hidden from his wife and from almost  everyone, until revelation to the public and to his wife in 1986. 

 

 

 

 

Spring, 1978, tempera on hardboard panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

Karl Keuerner became ill with leukemia.  The artist represents him at the bottom of Kuerner Hill near the place in which his own father had been killed decades earlier.  

 

 

It was Betsy who gave this painting the name ‘Lovers’ when she came to know of the Helga paintings in 1986. 

Betsy said the painted shadows implied the presence of a man.  She also said that the Helga paintings seemed to her to be ‘like a ballet: erotic, beautiful but untouchable’. 

 

 

 

Lovers, drybrush watercolour on paper, 1981   

  Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Black Velvet and detail, dry brush watercolour on paper, 1972.

Private collection. 

 

 

Barracoon, 1976, tempera on hardboard panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

This is a painting of Helga Testorf which evolved from an extant watercolour.  He changed the colour of her skin.

This painting has been the subject of outrage and dismay because it traverses a racial boundary in a country in which all aspects of race remain near-incendiary.

Baracoon, the name chosen by his wife, means (Spanish) a temporary enclosure for slaves, is oil on the fire.

Andrew Wyeth gave this painting to his wife in 1976 without revealing that this was Helga Testorf.  That revelation came only when he presented all his paintings of Helga Testorf in 1986.

The Brandywine Museum noted that the artist considered this his best nude painting. 

 

 

 

Night Shadow, 1979, watercolour on paper. 

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Untitled (Helga Looking From Afar), 1979, watercolor.  

Courtesy of the Sommerville Manning Gallery, Breck’s Mill, Greenville, Delaware

 

 

 

 

Catalogue of an exhibition of Wyeth paintings with Helga as subject at the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 1987

 

 

 

A third muse (painted from 1997-2000) is an Afro-American called Senna Moore, Chadds Ford.

 

Senna Moore,  the only one of Andrew Wyeth’s muses who was black, was represented by his painting, Dyad, at his centenary exhibition at the Brandywine Museum.

 

Criticism of the artist’s view of race extended to proposing Senna Moore as “the most artistically violated” of Andrew Wyeth’s models because he enclosed her as a barely visible body within the body of a tree.

 

 

 

Dryad, 2007, tempera on hardboard  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Next Morning,  2000, watercolour on paper.

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

The artist also painted this portrait of Senna Moore.

 

 

 

Body and Soul, 1999, drybrush watercolouor on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

 

Siri Erickson, Maine

 

Wyeth met her and her parents in 1967 in Cushing, Maine after the death of Christina Olsen.  Wyeth began to paint her in 1968 when she was 13 and displayed none of his representations of her until she was 19.

It was with her father’s permission and with his wife’s knowledge that he created a series of nudes of this young woman between 1968 and 1973.

These paintings, which mostly predate the Helga paintings, came as surprise to the artist’s critics for their sensuality.

 

 

 

Indian Summer and detail,  1970, tempera on hardboard panel  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Siri, tempera on hardboard panel, 1970

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

Father of Siri Erikson

 

 

The Finn, 1969, drybrush watercolour on paper  

Private collection

 George Ericson was an immigrant from Finland. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elaine Benner, Maine

 

 

Maidenhair, 1974, egg tempera on panel

Elaine Benner, who regularly modeled for Wyeth, is positioned here as a bride in The Old German Church in Waldoboro, Maine in a scene which the artist had witnessed before.

 

 

 

The African American Community at Chadds Ford, PA

 

An art historian, commenting in the catalogue of a memorial exhibition at the Brandywine River Museum in the 100th year of the artist’s birth, said that the artist ‘used’ members of the Afro-American community for the furtherance of his art and, in some cases, denied them their ‘humanity’.  This was presented as the abuse of poor people.

 

There is no evidence that the artist did not consider these African Americans – some of them – as friends and all of those he painted as equally worthy of representation as any others of his friends and subjects.  He visited with some of them regularly and broke bread with them.  One, Willard Snowden, lived in his studio for a number of years in the 1960s and was the subject of several portraits.

 

That he had Helga Testorf pass as black is nothing more than a ruse to baffle his wife.

And, it is less telling than the reverse: the histories of the many Afro-Americans who have passed (pass) as white for another kind of bafflement: to increase the chances of success in their lives. 

 

These cross-overs is one of the ways in which two racial communities intertwine in the dazzling complexity of their relationships whose history of miscegenation is now more than 400 years old.

 

None of which proves that Andrew Wyeth was a racist. On the contrary.  He grew up among American blacks; and he did not shun them.

 

His closest friend as child and adolescent was David Lawrence of whom he made a rare frontal portrait.

 

 

From the website of the New York Times, Credit: Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Black Hunter, 1938, tempera on panel.

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

In 1938, Lawrence and his family moved away and the two did not communicate with each other much as adults. 

 

 

 

 

John Lawrence loading Fence Rails, 1934, oil on canvas. 

 Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

John Lawrence, 1886-1970, was the father of David Lawrence.  The family moved away from Chadds Ford in 1938.

 

 

 

Bill Loper with Big Tree Trunk, 1934, oil on canvas

 Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

 

 

  Grape Wine, 1966, tempera on Masonite 

 Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Willard Snowden, also known as ‘the Drifter’.  The name of the painting may be related to the ruby red painted on the reverse or of Snowden’s habit of greeting visitors to the studio with a glass of wine.

 

 

 

Willard, 1959, watercolour on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

 

 

Fur Hat, Study for Adam, 1953, watercolour and pencil on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

 

Adam, 1963, tempera on hardboard panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

The Brandywine museum noted that Adam Johnson lived along the route which the artist took to get to the Kuerner farmstead. 

A farmer himself and a groundskeeper for local properties, Adam Johnson became a friend and frequent subject of Wyeth for almost 40 years.

Wyeth also was interested in the inventive quality of the Johnson chicken coop and pig pen, which he also memorialized.

 

 

 

Fox Grass Below Adam’s, 1934, oil on canvas

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Winter Fodder, 1939, egg tempera on panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

Adam Johnson.

 

 

 

Day of the Fair and detail, 1963, drybrush watercolour on paper  

Saint Louis Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri

 

 

 

 

Detail of James Loper, 1952, pencil on paper

Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts

 

The brothers, Ben and Bill Loper, lived in Chadds Ford and were painted often by Andrew Wyeth.  So, especially in the 1950s, was James Loper, the adopted son of Ben Loper.

 

 

 James Loper, 1952, tempera on hardboard panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

James Loper, 1952 (Study), pencil on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

The Drifter, 1964, drybrush watercolour on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

Willard Snowden.

 

 

 

Family Tree Study, 1964, watecolour on paper

From the website of the NY Times.Credit: Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)

 

 

 

 

James Loper (Study), 1952, drybrush watercolour on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Old Bill Loper, 1934, oil on canvas  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

Tom and His Granddaughter, 1959, pencil on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

Painted Post Study, 1983; tempera on panel.  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

Othaniel Winfield (1908-1996) shown on the porch of his house.  Winfield was a self-employed upholsterer and also managed the boiler operations at Cheyney University.

 

 

 

Chester County and detail, 1962, drybrush watercolour on paper

  Private collection 

 

The museum noted that this is a portrait of Tom Clark who, having fought in WW1 at the Meuse-Argonne offensive in France, retired to the Brandywine Valley.  One of the artist’s great interests was this war.

 

 

 

 

That Gentleman (study of Tom Clark for That Gentleman), watercolour and pencil on paper, 1960  

Dallas Museum of Art, Texas

 

 

 

 

That Gentleman Study, 1960, egg tempera on panel 

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Morning Sun and detail, (study of Tom Clark for That Gentleman), 1959, watercolour on paper with drybrush

Private collection

 

 

 

 

Other Portraits

 

 

 

Chadds Ford Quaker, 1935, oil on canvas

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

 

 

 

Blue-eyed Susan and detail, 1997, watercolour and graphite on paper

 Courtesty of the Sommerville Manning Gallery, Breck’s Mill, Greenville, Delaware

 

 

 

Detail of Sharpshooter, 1997, watercolour. 

Courtesy of the Sommerville Manning Gallery, Breck’s Mill, Greenville, Delaware

 

 

 

 

Detail of China Blue, 1987 watercolour.  

Courtesy of the Sommerville Manning Gallery, Breck’s Mill, Greenville, Delaware

 

 

 

 

Young America, 1950, egg tempera on gessoed board

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

 

 

 

 

Sallie Curtis McCoy, 1935, oil on canvas

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

The wife of a CEO of Dupont Company who himself had begun as an hourly worker in a factory which made cellophane.

 

 

 

 

The Children’s Doctor, 1949, tempera on panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

A portrait of pediatrician and family friend, Margaret Handy

 

 

 

Nogeeshik, 1972, tempera on hardboard panel. 

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

Nogeeshik Aquash, an Ojibwe activist, came to the artist’s home one day looking for support for his reservation.

 

 

 

 

Adrift, 1982, tempera on hardboard panel  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

 

The Brandywine museum noted that the artist was concerned about the health of his friend, the fisherman Walt Anderson, who died five years after this painting was made.

 

 

 

 

Painter’s Folly, 1989, tempera on panel

The artist was given the run of this property by its owners, Helen and George Sipala, who lived in Chadds Ford,

The Museum notes that ‘Marriage’ was painted from the artist’s experience one morning in this house.

 

 

 

Marriage, 1993, tempera on panel

 New Salem Museum and Academy of Fine Art. Photo from the website of Sotheby

 

This testimony of the painter Bo Bartlett, a student of Andrew Wyeth, was provided to Sotheby’s when this painting was auctioned.  He was with Andrew Wyeth when he finished making this painting:

 

“….The Sipalas, a married couple, being fans of Andrew’s, allowed him, like many other neighbors did in those years, to roam around their homes inside and out in search for the desired angle or perspective to tap into his psyche and find the illusive thing that ignited him.

 

“It was under these circumstances, as the story goes, that Andy wound up observing the Sipalas in their bed early one morning. That Andy was a peeping tom was understood and accepted…

 

 

 

 

Roast Chestnuts, tempera on hardboard panel, 1956  

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

Wyeth’s neighbour, Allen Messersmith is selling chestnuts along a rural route which is now a highway, Route 202.

 

 

 

 

Neighbour, 2003, pencil on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

Allen Messersmith 47 years after the image above.

 

 

 

Alone Study, watercolour on paper, 2004

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

A rare religious theme in the painter’s work, the model is Allen Messersmith whom Wyeth painted many times from childhood through adulthood.

 

 

 

Bareback, 1980, drybrush watercolour on paper

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

In 1989, Pam Cowe nursed the artist when he had hip surgery in Boston.

 

***********

 

When he was 70, he painted this memorial to some of those he had known in Chadds Ford. The ground on which they are dancing is sacred ground: Kuerner Hill.

 

 

Snow Hill, 1989, tempera on hardboard panel

Wyeth Foundation for American Art 

 

 

There are seven ribbons and six people.

One white ribbon flies free.  Andrew Wyeth  said that he was that ribbon blowing in the wind.

 

This is both dreamscape and memorial to the people the Andrew Wyeth had known for 50 years  at Chadds Ford.

 

 

 

Its name is from the moment in Moby Dick when the great white whale is finally sighted and Ahab says: “A hump like a snow-hill! It’s Moby Dick!”

 

Just as the white whale in Moby Dick represents, among other things, the limits of human understanding and the complexity of our lives and of life, so does this place in the life of the artist. 

 

For in the background are the railroad tracks where N.C. Wyeth and his 3-year-old grandson were killed in 1945. An event of incomprehensible fate and grief in the artist’s life and that of his family.

 

These are the maypole dancers around this snow pole: 

Karl Kuerner.  The farmer on the extreme left in military coat and helmet.  

 

Karl Kuerner is holding hands with Anna, his wife.

 

 

 

Anna Kuerner‘s right hand is held by the one-armed Bill Loper who had succumbed to mental illness.

 

Helga Testorf is holding on to Bill Loper’s prosthetic hook. 

 

 

 

 

Moving to the right, on the other side of Helga Testorf is Allan Lynch. His life had ended in suicide. 

Making up the circle is  Adam Johnson.

 

The artist had painted the subjects  of this painting many times but never again after the date of this memorial of the joy and grief of his life on this particular earth made sacred by their lives here together.

 

 

Snow Hill and detail, 1989, tempera on hardboard panel.

 

 

Andrew Wyeth died in Chadds Ford and was buried in the Olson family graveyard in Cushing, Maine.