Wyeth in Watercolor

From the Boston Globe:

Long before Andrew Wyeth became the painter of ''Christina's World" and other sentimental, calendar-ready icons, he was a great watercolorist -- many would say the greatest American working in that medium since Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent.

Consider the 1934 ''In the Church Yard," whose paper looks so drenched that you could still wring moisture out of it. Stand close and admire the way the colors bleed into each other; stand back, and the image comes into clearer focus. Fresh and free, the work is imbued with a sense of mysticism courtesy of a traditional device -- a diagonal shaft of light falling from the sky.