Kalounna in Frogtown

A slender adolescent boy dominates the landscape in Jamie Wyeth's large Kalounna in Frogtown. He stands in front of a red-shuttered wood-frame house in the left distance and an unloaded red Ford semi-trailer truck on the right. He wears a red T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the television drama “Dallas," a popular series at the time Wyeth painted this work. The artist suggested tension between the boy and his surroundings in the hands—one tightly clenched in a fist, the other open with fingers awkwardly splayed—and in the background in the contrast between the starkly sheared branches of the trees and the material abundance represented by the large house and powerful truck. Framed against a pale but overcast sky, the figure is positioned as if slightly above the viewer, whom he fixes with a steady gaze, his expression closed.

Wyeth is said to have seen the background scene for this painting in a small community called Frogtown, some miles from his own farm in Chadds Ford in southeastern Pennsylvania. The correspondence between the house's red shutters and the color of the large truck parked nearby inspired him. He used this background for his portrait of Kalounna, the eleven-year-old son of a couple who worked as caretakers on Wyeth's farm. Kalounna's parents were Laotian refugees who fled to the United States because of warfare and political upheaval in their country. Each family member assumed an American first name, but Wyeth retained the boy's Laotian name, Kalounna, in the painting's title. Both the artist and the sitter signed the painting, an unusual initiative. Kalounna in Frogtown is a portrait of the modern immigrant experience, inspired by the artist's immediate surroundings in rural Pennsylvania and reflecting the artistic tradition of the Wyeth family.

An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (organizer). Venues: The Academy of the Arts of the USSR, Leningrad, USSR, March 11–April 12, 1987; The Academy of the Arts of the USSR, Moscow, USSR, April 24–May 31, 1987; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., July 4–August 30, 1987; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, September 29–November 29, 1987; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 13, 1987–February 14, 1988; The Setagaya Museum, Tokyo, Japan, March 10–April 21, 1988; Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy, May 17–June 20, 1988; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England, July 12–August 29, 1988; Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, September 17–November 22, 1988. [exh. cat.]

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