NEW YORK, NY.- A poignant self-portrait by one of America’s greatest and most beloved 20th century artists, Andrew Wyeth, leads the American Art sale at Bonhams New York on May 18. Titled Breakup, the painting is estimated at U.S. $1,500,000-2,500,000.

Acquired by the present owner directly from the artist upon its completion, Breakup depicts a pair of hands seemingly emerging from a large ice floe. It was inspired by dramatic weather during the winter of 1999, in the region of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where the artist lived and worked all of his life. The Brandywine River, which flows through the township, froze over in a cold snap, producing thick masses of ice and earth along the river’s edge. The next morning, Wyeth observed the blankets of ice, which piled up, as he described, appearing “like a mattress sale”.

As the season’s freeze came to an end, Wyeth illustrated the thaw in Breakup, picturing thick masses of ice, razor sharp, released to the current down river. The artist’s application of the tempera, the medium used in Breakup, echoes the natural behaviors of winter, the gradual building and sewing of thick masses of material. The artist said: “Tempera is something with which I build—like building in great layers the way the earth was itself built. Tempera is not the medium for swiftness.”

The hands depicted in the painting were Wyeth’s own, copied from bronze casts commission by his wife, Betsy James Wyeth, and modeled by his orthopaedic surgeon. (A bronze set of these hands will be offered with the lot, originally gifted to the present owner by the artist’s wife).

The meaning of Breakup has been the subject of a number of different interpretations but it is most widely regarded as a one of the artist’s most stirring self-portraits. Wyeth was an artist who favored communication through symbols and metaphors, in John Wilmerding’s essay in Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic he theorizes: “As long as he imagines himself as a thing or a part of a landscape, Wyeth can maintain the fiction that he is an invisible seer. Perhaps he so rarely painted conventional self-portraits because to do so would entail looking into a mirror, thus shattering his cherished concept of himself as a concealed onlooker.” (Ibid, p. 55)

“Andrew Wyeth was a master of allusion and often hid the meaning of his works under an apparently calm and simple surface. Breakup is no exception,” said Director of American Art Kayla Carlsen. “It is a wonderfully intriguing painting which leaves the viewer guessing…but it’s a puzzle that is richly rewarding.”

Breakup is one of several paintings by Andrew Wyeth to be offered in American Art, all of which come from a private North Carolina collection. Additional lots include: Guarded U.S. $300,000-500,000; Only Child U.S. $ 300,000-500,000 and Loden Coat Study U.S. $200,000-300,000. Also for sale are works by Wyeth’s father Newell Convers Wyeth and his son, Jamie Wyeth, from the same collection.

Other highlights include:

• Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), It Was Yellow & Pink l, estimate U.S. $500,000 – 700,000

• Milton Avery (1893-1965), Pale Trees—Dark Pool, estimate U.S. $400,000 – 600,000

• Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Starfish, estimate U.S. $200,000 – 300,000