In Pennsylvania, Exploring Wyeth's World Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times Andrew Wyeth's studio in Chadds Ford, Pa., was opened to the public last summer. For nearly 60 years the artist Andrew Wyeth spent every fall and winter in Chadds Ford, Pa., among the hills where colors changed from tawny to russet, and - in the dead of winter - to a sharp, brittle white. Here, in the place where he was born, his fascination with the landscapes and the people never flagged. The house in which the artist grew up - a red brick building that his father, the illustrator N. C. Wyeth, built for the family in 1911 - is down the road from Andrew Wyeth's own prim, white clapboard and stucco house and studio, which the Brandywine River Museum opened to the public last summer. And just over the hill, perhaps a 20-minute walk down private back roads, is the farmhouse that belonged to Karl and Anna Kuerner, where Andrew Wyeth painted some of his greatest works. The trio of buildings (N. C. Wyeth's home, Andrew's studio and the Kuerner farm) underscore the compact realm in which the artist moved. After Andrew married, he and his wife, Betsy, divided their time between Cushing, Me. - where they spent summers and where Betsy's family had property - and Chadds Ford. Both were small American towns that, for the artist, represented worlds big enough to inspire a life's work. "I feel limited if I travel," he once told Thomas Hoving, then the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I feel freer in surroundings that I don't have to be conscious of. I'll say that I love the object, or I love the hill. But that hill sets me free. I could wander over countless hills. But this one hill becomes thousands of hills to me. Chadds Ford, which is smaller than nine square miles, provided the inspiration and privacy Wyeth needed. Most of his life, he worked seven days a week, leaving his home at 8:30 a.m. and returning at 5:30 p.m. He even worked on Christmas afternoons. Once, when he was 23 years old and his young wife wanted to extend their honeymoon, the groom refused, arguing that he had to get back to his work. For "French Twist," his 1967 portrait of Betsy, Wyeth produced more than 20 studies, evidence of the intense energy he put into his work. To give a sense of how the painter worked in his studio, conservators have placed a carton of real eggs beside Wyeth's easel. Artists mix egg yolks with pigments and water to create tempera paint. A mirror that offered Wyeth a different perspective on his work is on the wall behind the easel. When he was in the studio, classical music played: Bach, Mozart and Rachmaninoff were among his favorites. But the studio reveals only a part of Andrew Wyeth's life in Chadds Ford. Wyeth's father, N. C. - known for his 1911 dramatic drawings for "Treasure Island" - was a devoted patriarch who sought to infuse his children with a love of literature and the arts. "It was a reading family," said Christine Podmaniczky, associate curator for N. C. Wyeth's Collections at the Brandywine River Museum. The family bookshelves held Jane Austen's Letters, Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks" and other classics. The children and their friends frequently dressed in costumes from their father's prop collection and impersonated heroes like Robin Hood. At Christmas, N. C. played Old Kriss, stomping across the roof and yelling at the reindeer. No surprise that Andrew became a painter as did two of his sisters. A third sister, Ann, was a composer of some note and his brother, Nathaniel, became a mechanical engineer and inventor. Andrew Wyeth's own sprawling living room reflects the painter's myriad interests. Here sits his collection of nearly 1,000 toy soldiers, military helmets and masks for fencing (a favorite family sport). The adjacent library is loaded with books on painters from Albrecht Dürer to Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. A human skeleton, which Wyeth kept for modeling, is propped nearby. Wyeth's shelves also held books on movies, including "MGM: Where the Lion Roars" and "Great Hollywood Movies," along with old 16-millimeter prints of Wyeth's favorites, "The Big Parade" and "Wings," which he often screened for family and friends. Correction: May 25, 2013 An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of one of England's foremost novelists, whose work was among the Wyeth family's book collection. She was Jane Austen, not Austin. And the article gave the wrong surname of a wealthy publisher who bought many Wyeth paintings; he is Leonard Andrews, not Anderson.