Famed American painter and Delaware County resident Andrew Wyeth has been called one of the greatest American painters of the 20th century. Wyeth died Friday at the age of 91 inside his Chadds Ford home.
His paintings were centered on blue-collar workers in post-war America. Many of his subjects were his neighbors and friends.
One such series featuring a blonde woman named Helga, became the center of a media firestorm back in the 1980s after the “secret” works appeared on the scene.
Helga, who was actually his sister’s housekeeper, was rumored to be the painter’s mistress. Newspapers and national magazines such as Time and Newsweek featured the works and fueled the rumors that the paintings visually depicted Wyeth’s alleged fling.
But that was no accident. In fact, it was a very calculated that worked so brilliantly for the Wyeth neighbor who'd bought the Helga collection, he turned a tremendous profit.
In an article Friday, Christopher Knight, culture writer for the Los Angeles Times, sheds light on the way word spread about the so-called affair in the world before the Internet saying that Time and Newsweek’s actions were “the pre-Internet equivalent of a scandal going viral.”
"Ten short months after the tour ended, Andrews [the Helga buyer] sold “the national treasure” to an unidentified Japanese buyer, for $40 million to $50 million. With the help of a tax-exempt array of nonprofit art museums, the collector's three-year profit on the phony art-and-sex scandal has been estimated in excess of 600%.'''
Knight also highlights the belief that the alleged affair was nothing more than a manufactured spin on the story increase the value of the paintings.
