George Weymouth, artist who hid Wyeth's 'Helga' works, dies

CHADDS FORD, Pa. (AP) - A Pennsylvania conservationist and artist who for years helped hide a secret cache of Andrew Wyeth's "Helga" portraits has died.

The Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art, says George Weymouth died at his home in Chadds Ford on April 24. He was 79.

Weymouth, whose nickname was "Frolic," opened the Brandywine River Museum of Art in 1971 in a converted gristmill as a place to display the works of Wyeth, his lifelong friend.

For years, Weymouth hid a stash of Wyeth's secret portraits of his neighbor Helga Testorf. The works, many of them nudes, stunned the art world in 1986 when Wyeth revealed the existence of 240 paintings, watercolors and pencil studies he had done of Testorf from 1971 to 1985.

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