Beginning in 1976, Jamie Wyeth and the dancer Rudolph Nureyev partnered in an artistic conversation resulting in a series of portrait studies. Wyeth measured Nureyev's muscled frame with calipers, taking down detailed notes on the dancer's anatomy in his sketchbooks. The studies from 1976 and 1977 came into service for a second series of portraits Wyeth embarked upon well after the dancer's death in 1993.
While the 1970s studies are exacting andcareful renderings, the twenty-first century works are colorful, daring, and vivacious. Some of the 1970s works were even repurposed and revised, combining Wyeth's firsthand observations of Nureyev with an expressionistic memorial to the dancer.
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