Kleberg

Kleberg is a seemingly straightforward portrait of a dog incongruously paired with an old-fashioned straw beehive, both placed before a bookshelf filled with the legible if cropped spines of books. The dog, a male white Labrador, one eye ringed by a thick black line, sits stolidly, gazing unblinkingly at the viewer. The beehive is an exact match for the animal's height, and the two forms, both rendered in scrupulous detail, convincingly occupy three-dimensional space. The inanimate straw hive, however, provides an intriguing contrast to the dog's contained energy and alert, conscious expression. Beginning his career as a painter of portraits, Wyeth often painted animals with a similar probing interest in the relationship between exterior surfaces and inner character. In his many unsentimental animal paintings, he paid particular attention to the expression of the eyes, highlighted here with the ring around one of them.

The books in the background of this image—all titles with personal significance for Wyeth—suggest a biographical reading for this painting. Indeed, the dog is Wyeth's own, named Kleberg for the Texas ranching family who gave it as a puppy to the painter and his wife; the beehive, of an antique French type, is one of several that Wyeth collected. The artist carefully rendered the texture of the dog's coat and the beehive's scratchy surface. The apparently random juxtaposition of these two forms hints at the inexplicable, sometimes unintentionally comic strangeness of reality.

Jamie Wyeth: Recent Works, Coe Kerr Gallery, Inc., New York, New York, May 2–24, 1984. [exh. cat.]

Jamie Wyeth: An American View, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine (organizer). Venues: Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, June 19–September 9, 1984; Columbia Museum, Columbia, South Carolina, September 16–November 11, 1984; Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, November 30, 1984–January 20, 1985. [exh. cat.]

Selections from the Permanent Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, July 19–September 14, 1985.

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.]

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 1991.

N. C. Wyeth and His Grandson: A Legacy, Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 28–October 26, 1997; Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, January 23–March 29, 1998.

Dog Days of Summer: Works by Jamie Wyeth. Brandywine River Museum Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (organizer). Venue: Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, June 2–September 3, 2007.

Jamie Wyeth, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (organizer). Venues: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, July 16–December 28, 2014; Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, January 17–April 5, 2015; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas, April 25–July 5, 2015; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, July 23–October 5, 2015. [exh. cat.]

Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio, Denver Museum of Art (organizer). Venues: Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, November 8, 2015–February 7, 2016; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, March–June 2016 (exhibited in Denver, Colorado) [exh. cat.]

Jamie Wyeth. (exh. cat., Coe Kerr Gallery, Inc.). New York: Coe Kerr Gallery, Inc., 1984. Text p. 2; ill. cover (color).

“Jamie Wyeth at Coe Kerr Gallery." Art New/U.S.A. (Summer 1984). Text p. 10; ill. p. 10 (black & white).

Preble, Michael. Jamie Wyeth: An American View. (exh. cat., Portland Museum of Art). Portland, Maine: Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, 1984. Text pp. 8, 37 (checklist).

Duff, James H. et al. An American Vision; Three Generations of Wyeth Art: N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, James Wyeth. (exh. cat., Brandywine River Museum). Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1987. Ill. p. 62 (color).

Atkinson, D. Scott et al. A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art. Edited by Terry A. Neff. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987. Ill. p. 296, pl. T-187 (color).

Kleberg, Jamie Wyeth. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 1991. Ill. (black & white).

Dog Days by Jamie Wyeth. (exh. cat., Brandywine River Museum). Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania: Brandywine River Museum, 2007. Text p. 23; ill. p. 22 (color).

Associated Press. “Black-eyed dog art up for auction." Chicago Sun-Times (February 27, 2011): 3A. Text p. 3A.

Davis, Elliot Bostwick. Jamie Wyeth. (exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) Boston: MFA Publications, 2014. Text p. 95; p. 197, cat. no. 65; ill. cover (color, detail); p. 122, cat. no. 65 (color).

Standring, Timothy J. Wyeth: Andrew & Jamie in the Studio (exh. cat., Denver Art Museum). Denver, CO: Denver Art Museum in association with Yale University Press, 2015. Text p. 102, cat. no. 61; ill. p. 103, cat. no. 61 (color); p. 204, cat. no. 61 (checklist).