This book presents drawings that Andrew Wyeth retained for his own collection -- many preliminary to well-known paintings. Created over more than five decades, from 1951 to 2005, they range from portraits of family members and friends to vibrant depictions of objects, landscapes, and buildings in and around the artist's homes in Pennsylvania and Maine. These works reflect the insight, emotion, and technique that are uniquely his. They demonstrate Wyeth's extraordinary skill as a draftsman and the accuracy with which he sees light and dark, enabling him to model forms while suggesting the very substance and texture of what he sees. "I have always been powerfully affected by Andrew Wyeth's drawings and studies -- particularly those studies that do not attempt to cover the whole surface of the paper but instead focus on a few elements, so that the image seems to emerge magically from the empty white background, rather like a photograph that we observe in the process of development." -- Henry Adams