At first glance, it’s a peculiar scene: a maypole in the middle of winter.
Six dancers clutch colorful ribbons in mid-frolic, and a Christmas tree is perched atop the pole. The scene is made all the more curious as these dancers are not children, but adults.
Wyeth knows how to use a near-monochromatic palette. Dark and light play against each other, and the landscape’s full range of gray and tan creates texture. The clean snow quiets the landscape, and I wonder if the dancers are singing. The scene seems joyous, but there is something ominous about it, a sense of foreboding. Perhaps it is the stillness of the landscape or the madcap clothing of the party, but I am left with a tinge of sadness as I stand before the painting.
The snow is untouched. No footprints lead in or out. Have they danced through a snowstorm? Have they been there forever?
In honor of his 70th birthday, Andrew Wyeth (1917 – 2009) painted the whimsically morose Snow Hill, depicting six of his frequent models rejoicing at his death. With grim humor, Wyeth understood he was difficult to work with. Speaking of the models who posed for him, he once said, “When I worked, I raised hell with them mentally and emotionally. They wish I were dead, so they wouldn’t have to pose anymore.”
Snow Hill takes its name from the moment in Moby Dick when the great white whale is finally sighted: “A hump like a snow-hill! It’s Moby Dick!” In the painting is an intimacy with the landscape, perhaps like Ahab’s intimacy with the great white whale, a grief to conquer or befriend.
In the background are the railroad tracks where Wyeth’s father’s car stalled in 1945. Wyeth’s father, N.C., and his three-year-old grandson were struck and killed by a train. The loss of Wyeth’s father had been devastating.
N.C. Wyeth (1882 – 1945) was an illustrator, most notably for classic children’s books like Treasure Island and The Last of the Mohicans. He had a huge personality, often playing dress-up with his children and acting out the characters of his book illustrations. He was also known for being controlling, managing the children’s schedules and interests.
Frequently ill, Andrew, the youngest of five children, was considered too delicate to go to school and was instead educated at home by his father. He developed a close relationship with his father and learned to paint. After N.C.’s death, the younger Wyeth’s work took on a more serious tone. He said that his father’s death “gave [him] a reason to paint, an emotional reason.”
Anne Classen Knutson, who served as curator for an exhibit of Wyeth paintings at the High Museum of Art, told Smithsonian Magazine that Wyeth’s paintings of objects “are not straightforward illustrations of his life.” Instead, Knutson continued, “They are filled with hidden metaphors that explore common themes of memory, nostalgia and loss.” Perhaps for Wyeth reflecting on death brought his father close. He first painted the hill, later depicted in Snow Hill in 1946, shortly after his father’s death. Wyeth said the hill became the body of his father. His father, always present. Wyeth said he could almost feel the hill breathe.
The hill was known as Kuerner’s Hill, in rural Pennsylvania, and from it, one could view all the places where Wyeth’s friends and neighbors lived—the very same models featured in this painting. Although their faces are obscured, their identities are apparent by the iconic clothing they wore in previous works.
Wyeth’s long-time neighbors, Karl and Anna Kuerner, head up the dance. Karl, a farmer, was haunted by his time serving as a machine gunner for the German army during World War I. Kuerner immigrated with his wife, Anna, and their daughter to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where Wyeth lived, shortly after the war. The angry demons Kuerner’s service left behind intrigued Wyeth. Wyeth painted Kuerner many times, even showing the older man’s decline towards the end of his life, but none was more iconic than the craggy and aged WWI vet in The German (1975). He wears his uniform complete with the steel Stahlhelm helmet, meant to provide protection against grenade fragments.
Anna Kuerner wrestled her own demons. She was often found wandering the farm muttering to herself in German and spent periods in an asylum. In Snow Hill, she is portrayed in the work pinafore and hat Wyeth had painted her in his 1971 work The Kuerners.
A one-armed neighbor, William Loper, holds Anna’s hand in the dance. Wyeth had painted Loper and his brother James many times, most notably in Old Bill Loper and April Wind (1934). William Loper is shown with his prosthetic hook, the woman who caused a ruckus in the art world, Helga Testort, holds onto its curve.
Wyeth met Helga when she was hired to nurse Karl Kuerner as he lay dying. Wyeth painted her for fifteen years, producing nearly 250 works of art, including nude studies. This muse relationship was unknown to Wyeth’s wife, Betsy, until revealed to the art world in 1986. Here in Snow Hill, Helga whips round the circle, her long red braids flying in the wind.
Wyeth’s painting also includes Allan Lynch, a local boy he had earlier depicted, running down this same hill, chased by his shadow in his 1946 painting Winter. 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 last dancer is neighbor and pig farmer, Adam Johnson, whom Wyeth portrayed in his 1963 painting, Adam. Wyeth saw Adam as a fantastic figure, a Mogul prince or Santa himself.
The rest of the landscape includes locations Wyeth had painted many times over the years: the Kuerner farmhouse and barn, Mother Archie’s octagonal church, the Ring family home, and Adam Johnson’s shed and haystack.
Most of the models featured in the painting had been long dead themselves. Karl Kuerner succumbed to cancer, Allan Lynch to suicide, Bill Loper to mental illness, and, of course, Wyeth’s own father and nephew in a car accident. Here, Wyeth depicted these old friends as more joyous than he had ever painted them before. Here, they were free from the torment Wyeth had seen in them. Wyeth was looking back at all those who were important to his art, those who made him who he was. He stated that he too is in the picture, as the empty ribbon blowing in the wind. Although Wyeth lived another 20 years, he did not paint these models again. He was saying goodbye.