Helga Testorf

A documentary about the painter Andrew Wyeth. The program incorporates the artist's great works along with family photographs, home movies, and personal letters to give viewers insight into the artist's very private world.

Michael Palin heads for rural Pennsylvania and Maine to explore the extraordinary life and work of one of America's most popular and controversial painters, Andrew Wyeth. Fascinated by his iconic painting Christina's World, Palin goes in search of the real life stories that inspired this and Wyeth's other depictions of the American landscape and its hard grafting inhabitants. Tracking down the farmers, friends and family featured in Wyeth's magically real work, Palin builds a picture of an eccentric, enigmatic and driven painter. He also gets a rare interview with Helga, the woman who put Wyeth back in the headlines when the press discovered he had been painting her nude, compulsively but secretly for 15 years.

Artists Bo Bartlett and Betsy Eby travel the country finding art in their surroundings before being unexpectedly forced to consider what it would mean to lose the ability to see.

Andrew Wyeth's favorite model, Helga Testorf, was a national sensation when the secret paintings of her were revealed... now she tells her side of the story.