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Date Issued:	2017-07-12
Postage Value:	0 cents
Commemorative issue Andrew Wyeth

Sailor’s Valentine
These stamps celebrate the centennial of the birth of Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), one of the most prominent American artists of the 20th century. Working in a realistic style that defied artistic trends, Wyeth created haunting and enigmatic paintings based largely on people and places in his life, a body of work that continues to resist easy or comfortable interpretation. This issuance includes 12 stamps that feature a detail of a different Andrew Wyeth painting: • Wind from the Sea (1947) • Big Room (1988) • Christina’s World (1948) • Alvaro and Christina (1968) • Frostbitten (1962) • Sailor’s Valentine (1985) • Soaring (1942–1950) • North Light (1984) • Spring Fed (1967) • The Carry (2003) • Young Bull (1960) • My Studio (1974). The son of renowned illustrator N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth was born and raised in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Wyeth and his wife lived in Chadds Ford while typically spending each summer and early fall in Maine. In both places, he scrutinized the lives, houses, and personal belongings of the people around him, finding particular inspiration in the German immigrants on a nearby Chadds Ford farm and often painting portraits of them and views in and around their home. By this time, the tendencies that define much of his work were taking shape, among them a focus on death and loss; the use of places and objects to serve as stand-ins for people; an intense and unsentimental scrutiny of nature; and an often startling austerity and stark lack of color. Rather than depict nature with photographic accuracy, however, Wyeth used painting to convey emotions that were difficult to put into words. His work often reflected memories, associations, and echoes from his personal life, including his own distinctive sense of the wondrous and the strange.