Andrew Wyeth is one the most important and well~known American artists of the twentieth century.
Born in 1917, the youngest of five children, Andrew Wyeth was plagued with health issues from an early age. This kept him from attending public school, allowing him solitude to explore his surroundings and develop his artistic abilities. He began his first formal art training at the age of 15 under his father, N.C. Wyeth, who is famous for illustrations in Treasure Island. Wyeth's first solo exhibition was at the Macbeth Gallery, New York in 1937; it was sold out by the second day, an astounding feat considering this was during the Depression. Andrew Wyeth's importance in American art was solidified in 1959 when The Philadelphia Museum purchased Ground Hog Day for $31,000. At the time this was the highest price ever paid by a US museum for a work by a living American painter. Three years later Wyeth broke his own record, when That Gentleman was purchased by the Dallas Museum for $58,000.

Wyeth draws inspiration from his nearby surroundings. All of his paintings are of scenes within a few miles of Chadd's Ford and the Wyeth summer cottage in Cushing, Maine.