{"data":{"id":"3362","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":3362,"topgoose_id":2078,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":3362,"title":"Winter Fields","display_artist_text":"Andrew Wyeth","display_date":"1942","accession_number":"77.91","dimensions":"Overall: 17 5/16 × 41 in. (44 × 104.1 cm)","medium":"Tempera on composition board","department":"collection","classification":"Paintings","credit_line":"Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Benno C. Schmidt, in memory of Mr. Josiah Marvel, first owner of this picture","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eAndrew Wyeth, \u003cem\u003eWinter Fields\u003c/em\u003e, 1942. Tempera on composition board, overall: 17 5/16 × 41 in. (44 × 104.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Benno C. Schmidt, in memory of Mr. Josiah Marvel, first owner of this picture 77.91. © Andrew Wyeth / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eWhen many American artists were turning toward abstraction, Andrew Wyeth remained a realist, producing precise, evocative paintings of the places he knew best. \u003ci\u003eWinter Fields\u003c/i\u003e depicts a dead, frozen crow Wyeth found near his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He took the bird into his studio, sketched it, and then painted it in exquisite detail from a worm’s-eye view, which magnifies the bird relative to its surroundings and thereby suggests the wider significance of its death. Completed during World War II, \u003ci\u003eWinter Fields\u003c/i\u003e recalls similarly unflinching photographs of corpses lying on battlefields. Yet Wyeth resented comparisons of his work to photography and said he despised cameras. In fact, despite its apparent precision, \u003ci\u003eWinter Fields \u003c/i\u003esubtly distorts reality. The distant trees are as sharply focused as the crow in the foreground—an impossibility for both the human eye and the camera lens. This visual effect compresses the pictorial space toward the surface, and is accentuated by the lacelike, overlapping blades of grass, which create a delicate surface pattern. \u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"A dead black crow lies among dry grasses in an open rural field under a cloudy sky.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T15:37:23.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T11:59:28.457-05:00","images":[{"id":95140,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/3362/77_91_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"1451","type":"artist"}]}}}}