Christina’s World is a 1948 painting by American painter Andrew Wyeth and one of the best-known American paintings of the mid-20th century. It is a tempera work done in a realist style, depicting a woman in an inclined position on the ground in a treeless, mostly tawny field, looking up at a gray house on the horizon, a barn, and various other small outbuildings adjacent to the house. It is held by the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.
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Why it’s giving me “no escape” feelings?
If I recall correctly the girl has polio which caused her to collapse in the field and is trying to get back home but there is no one available to help her. So your no escape, or maybe “no hope” feeling is correct.
This painting always gives me an eerie feeling. Maybe it’s the uneven horizon? Or the distance between the woman and the house? The woman seems very isolated.
Yes, same - and it’s meant to. Did you read about the model?
The woman in the painting is Anna Christina Olson (May 3, 1893 – January 27, 1968). Anna had a degenerative muscular disorder, possibly polio or Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorder, which left her unable to walk. She was firmly against using a wheelchair, so she would crawl everywhere. Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when he saw her crawling across a field while he was watching from a window in the house.
[Sarcasm] Amazing that he painted her instead of, you know, helping her.
No, I didn’t… That was hard.
