Visitors to Washington's National Gallery of Art's "Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In" are greeted by a masterpiece, the artist's 1947 Wind from the Sea, which structures the whole exhibition.

Visitors to the National Gallery of Art's "Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In" are greeted by a masterpiece, the artist's 1947 "Wind from the Sea," which structures the whole exhibition.

Wyeth painted real things, real people. He was not always great. But amid the abstract and minimalist drone that dominates most museum collections of postwar art ... wind-lashed blades of sea ...