American Painter Andrew Wyeth Died iN His Sleep

Although some critics deride his art as drab and kitschy, Andrew Wyeth's melancholy paintings were praised by others as profound reflections of 20th Century alienation and existentialism.

Wyeth, who focused on the people and landscapes of Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley and coastal Maine in works such as "Christina's World," died in his sleep at his Philadelphia area home early Friday. He was 91.

The death of Wyeth the most famous member of the three-generation family art dynasty will likely rekindle the debate over his contribution to American art.

"The squabbling is kind of art-world politics over who owns modernism,As we get farther from his work, we're going to recognize that he's just a different voice of modernism,This kind of quarreling over his status is going to fade, and he will be recognized as a great, great American artist." said curator Kathleen Foster of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who helped assemble the last major retrospective of his work at the museum in 2006.

Wyeth's pictures express for many the alienation of 20th century life and art, she said. Yet critics in the 1950s assailed him as a provincial reactionary next to New York abstract painters Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning.

Wyeth died at his home in suburban Chadds Ford, Pa., after a brief illness, according to Jim Duff, director of the Brandywine River Museum.

The son of famed painter and book illustrator N.C. Wyeth and the father of painter Jamie Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth gained wealth, acclaim and tremendous popularity during his lengthy art career.

Still, some critics viewed him as a facile realist, not an artist but merely an illustrator.

The public voiced no such complaints, embracing his work over half a century and turning out in record numbers for the 2006 exhibit in Philadelphia.

The Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, a converted 19th-century grist mill, includes hundreds of works by three generations of Wyeths.

The painter was born July 12, 1917, in Chadds Ford, the youngest of N.C. Wyeth's five children. One of his sisters, Henriette, who died in 1997, also became an artist of some note, and one of his two sons, Jamie, became a noted painter in his own right. His other son, Nicholas, became an art dealer.

Wyeth is survived by his wife and two sons. Funeral services will be private. A public memorial service is being planned at the Brandywine River Museum.