Basic Information

Historical Context

Painted in 1967, one year before Christina Olson's death in 1968. The Olson House — a three-story Federal-style farmhouse — was Wyeth's most painted subject and achieved worldwide recognition through Christina's World (1948). Between 1940 and 1968, Wyeth created hundreds of works at this property. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 and is now owned and managed by the Farnsworth Art Museum as a museum property open to the public. Visual Description A stark, vertical view of the weathered farmhouse captured from a low angle. The building dominates the left two-thirds, its clapboard siding worn and mottled. Three vertical apertures punctuate the facade: a small attic window, a second-story window with a dark silhouette visible within, and most dramatically, a ground-floor doorway glowing with intense amber-orange light — suggesting interior warmth against the cold exterior. A shed or porch roof juts from the lower left, topped with snow. Snow-covered ground surrounds the base, with dark, barren hills rolling to the right. Signature "Andrew Wyeth '67" appears in the lower right corner. Artistic Analysis This 1967 version is particularly notable for the illuminated doorway — more prominent than in many versions, suggesting invitation, mystery, or the warmth of memory against cold reality. The dark shape in the second-story window (possibly Christina Olson, who was often housebound) creates a ghostly presence — watching but not seen clearly. The house's vertical thrust makes it a "tower of isolation," rising into empty sky. As one of the last depictions before Christina's death, the painting carries profound elegiac weight — a house awaiting its last inhabitant's departure, rendered with Wyeth's characteristic emotional restraint and technical mastery.