Master Bedroom by Andrew Wyeth, more so than any other singular image, reminds me of my childhood home. This feeling comes primarily from the fact that a framed print of this mid-century American classic hung in my home growing up. However, when I self-analytically dig a little deeper, the reasoning goes far beyond familiarity with a decoration. All art – visual, music, literary, etc. – speaks to me foremost through relatability. My favorite novels and films star characters that I can relate to. My favorite music contains lyrics that express emotions I feel. My favorite paintings depict scenes similar to my own life. Master Bedroom feels like it is an image plucked from a childhood memory that never actually happened to me.
The dog, serenely curled up with it’s head on a pillow, has a calming effect on me. I’ve had dogs my entire life and seeing them peacefully resting provides a tranquility beyond anything achievable pharmaceutically. Dogs are hyper aware of their surroundings because of their keep senses of smell and hearing so if they are at ease then you should be too. There is an added comfort from the dog being on the bed. My imagination inevitably plays a scene forward from this still frame where I lay down beside the dog and gently doze off as I have done for real so many times before.
My parents had a pure white cotton blanket with a woven and fringed border that was often on their bed during warmer months. They also had a dark brown four-post bed not unlike the one depicted here. However, nothing else about the bedroom in the painting looks like anything from my own life because it is so sparsely decorated. But it is this sparseness that furthers the tranquility of the painting. The neutral monotone colors and lack of extraneous details are similar to a dream. You see a dog, perhaps a specific dog from your life or some amalgamation of multiple dogs. Then you see a window with a hint of the exterior of the house and a few tree branches, the only details your subconscious would provide in a dream. Maybe this isn’t my room or my dog but I feel like I’ve lived here and I want to snuggle up next to this dog.
Wyeth is known for portraying detailed subjects in minimal, dream-like backgrounds. His most famous work, Christina’s World (owned by the MoMa), shows a girl in a pink dress laying down in a field, looking at two buildings in the distance. One building is given enough detail to clearly be a farmhouse while the other is blurred and left to the imagination. Just as with Master Bedroom, there are two clear details and the rest is left clean and open for the viewers imagination to interpret like the remnants of a dream.
The story goes that Wyeth’s title for the painting was a double entendre. The “master” alluded to in Master Bedroom is in fact the dog on the bed who was Wyeth’s own dog, named Rattler. Inspiration came for the painting when Wyeth came home exhausted one day and wanted to lay down. He found Rattler had already made himself comfortable in the master bed. It was clear that Rattler had usurped Wyeth as the master of the house. This is a realization familiar to anyone who has owned and loved dogs. It is also why I find this painting to be eternally relatable and why it will always feel like home to me.