‘Looking Out, Looking In’, which examines Andrew Wyeth’s preoccupation with windows (and perspectives) is yet another reason to celebrate Washington, D.C. this August.

I would not have wanted to miss the chance to see ‘Wind from the Sea’ (right).

Wyeth has captured it all so perfectly. The faint breeze; the tattered curtains; that momentary lightness of being that gently and joyfully lifts them high, briefly offering hope amidst a sombre reality.

‘Wind from the Sea’ was one of Wyeth’s early paintings (1947) and he would spend the next 60 years looking out of windows; looking at them; musing on them; drawing and painting the blocks of light and darkness. As the National Gallery exhibition shows, the window grid and geometric structure of windows  appears to help Wyeth distill compositions to their core emotion: “You can have the technique and paint the object,” Wyeth once said, but “it’s what’s inside you, the way you translate the object — and that’s pure emotion.”

He produced more than 300 works on the theme of windows, mixing abstract art and realism seamlessly and brilliantly it might be Edward Hopper meets Hallmark.