The United States Postal Service announced today that it will issue a pane of stamps in 2017 inspired by the art of Andrew Wyeth to commemorate the centennial of the artist’s birth. Wyeth was born and spent his life in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, home of the Brandywine River Museum of Art, which displays American art, including work by three generations of the Wyeth family, and offers tours of the artist’s studio.

The official dedication ceremony for the stamps will take place at the Brandywine River Museum of Art on Wednesday, July 12, 2017 at 10 a.m., 100 years to the day that Andrew Wyeth was born. This event is free and open to the public.

The pane of Forever® stamps features details of the 12 following Andrew Wyeth paintings:

• Alvaro and Christina, 1968
• Big Room, 1988
• The Carry, 2003
• Christina’s World, 1948
• Frostbitten, 1962
• North Light, 1984
• Sailor’s Valentine, 1985
• Soaring, 1942-50
• Spring Fed, 1967
• My Studio, 1974
• Wind from the Sea, 1947
• Young Bull, 1960

Derry Noyes served as art director and designer for this stamp sheet.

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) lived in Chadds Ford while typically spending each summer and early fall in Maine. In both places, he was inspired by the lives, houses, and personal belongings of the people around him, finding particular interest in the German immigrants on a nearby Chadds Ford farm, painting portraits of them and views in and around their home. By the 1940s, the tendencies that define much of his work were taking shape, among them a focus on death and loss; the uses of places and objects to serve as stand-ins for people, and intense and unsentimental scrutiny of nature, and an often startling austerity and stark lack of color. Rather than depict nature with photographic accuracy, Wyeth used painting to convey emotions that were difficult to put into words. His work often reflected memories, associations, and echoes from his personal life, including his own distinctive sense of the wondrous and the strange.

The exhibition Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect, on view on view from June 24 through September 17 at the Brandywine River Museum of Art, is the first chronological retrospective of the artist’s career since the 1970s. The exhibition is co-organized by Seattle Art Museum and includes over 100 of his finest paintings and works on papers selected from major museums and private collections. The exhibition will be on view at the Seattle Museum of Art starting in October 2017.

Guided tours of Andrew Wyeth’s studio are available seasonally, from April through mid-November. Wyeth painted in the studio from 1940 until 2008. Visitors may also tour the Kuerner Farm, which inspired nearly 1,000 works of art by Andrew Wyeth, as well as the N.C. Wyeth House and Studio. All are National Historic Landmarks.

The Brandywine River Museum of Art features an outstanding collection of American art housed in a 19th-century mill building with a dramatic steel and glass addition overlooking the banks of the Brandywine. The Museum is open daily (except Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day) from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for seniors ages 65 and over, $6 for students and children ages 6 to 12; free for children 5 and younger and members. The museum is located on Route 1 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. For more information, call 610.388.2700 or visit brandywinemuseum.org