In later nude paintings a certain lustiness is projected - if not for the artist, then for the occasion of potential immortality. This tempera, done in 1972, was one of his first portraits of her, and her discomfort is palpable.ĭone the same year, 'Black Velvet' is a reclining nude with the same black ribbon that brings to mind Manet's 'Olympia.' But unlike the bold regard of Olympia, Helga is looking away, body tense. But her arms are folded tightly under her breasts. True, Helga is wearing nothing but a black velvet ribbon and pendant around her neck. The title, 'Letting Her Hair Down,' seems tongue-in-cheek.

He has given Helga hair that could have come from Botticelli, blonde tendrils dripping over her shoulders. There are perhaps two dozen of what could be considered finished works - dry brush watercolors and temperas - and here Wyeth's talented brush sets off some textural pyrotechnics. Helga's world is somber browns and muted greens, and the Brandywine Valley looks like a simply unglorious place. Wyeth shows us a rather ordinary world - one person in excruciating isolation, as in the watercolor in which Helga walks alone in her Loden coat, her back to us, on a stark white sheet of paper. Maybe we shouldn't look too closely at artistic note-taking, just let the final product speak for itself. The drawings give an inner view of the artistic process.īut on the other hand, they are so obsessive and reductive we become bored. We see Wyeth's mistakes - the too-puffy cheek or the idea that's going nowhere. So many of these are preliminary drawings - Helga's face in different lights and poses, drawn 'til he got it right. But don't expect a lot of completed, polished works. 'The Helga Pictures' - opening Sunday at the National Gallery of Art - are more than 140 drawings and watercolors, more than half of the series. The mystery woman turned out to be Helga Testorf, a German immigrant and mother of four, a Wyeth neighbor in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He had been drawing and painting her for 15 years, and no one, not even his wife, knew the extent of his work. She is Helga, who rocked the art world last August when she was revealed as the subject of a major suite by Andrew Wyeth.

Lying naked and asleep, she's more still-life or landscape than living woman.

She gazes off into a corner of an orchard, as if searching for something unattainable. At times there's a resigned stoicism to the way she poses. SHE IS NOT beautiful, this modern Mona Lisa.

The helga pictures