“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape — the loneliness of it — the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.

Artist Andrew Wyeth died today at the age of 91 in his native Pennsylvania. A New York Times article called him one of the most popular and most lambasted American artists. Some called him an illustrator rather than a true interpreter or artist. His painting Christina’s World, of a disabled neighbor seen from the back looking toward her farm home, became iconic. It is in MoMA’s collection.

Wyeth chose to spend a lot of time alone, walking and painting. People often saw melancholy in his paintings but he preferred to see them as contemplative. He once asked have we “lost the art of being alone?”