Andrew Wyeth: the great divide

Andrew Wyeth, the iconic painter of mythic American landscapes, lonely farmhouses and mysterious country folk, died on Friday at his home in the Philadelphia suburb of Chadds Ford, aged 91. His most famous painting, Christina's World (above), was once reckoned to be as widely recognised in America as the portrait of George Washington on the dollar bill.

Unlike many of his contemporaries who were swept away by the Abstract Expressionist movement, Wyeth followed in the footsteps of the early 20th century realist movement in America. He was preoccupied with portraying ordinary Americans with great dignity. Christina's World, painted in 1948, shows a young crippled woman in a pink dress crawling across a brown field toward a bleak and distant farmhouse. It is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

While many called Wyeth their favourite American artist, critics accused him of staidness and sentimentality. Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Michael Kimmelman said: "Wyeth split public opinion as vigorously as, and probably even more so than, any other American painter including the other modern Andy, Warhol, whose milieu was as urban as Wyeth's was rural."

In a 1965 interview for Life magazine, Wyeth said: "In the art world today, I'm so conservative I'm radical."

There was a storm of controversy surrounding Wyeth in the 1980s when a series of secret erotic paintings came to light. They were the product of 15 years worth of secret modeling sessions with a neighbour, Helga Testorf. No one - and especially not his wife, Betsey - knew anything about what came to be known as the "Helga paintings". ·