Andrew Wyeth's Nude (1976) belongs to the Helga series, the fifteen-year study of Helga Testorf he made privately between 1971 and 1985 and revealed only in 1986, in a Time cover story. The series ranks with the Kuerner Farm and the Olson House among Wyeth's most coveted subjects, and because the 240-odd works were meant to remain intact, individual sheets rarely reach the market.

Helga stands at a window with her back to us, her blond hair braided and pinned high so her shoulders and spine are bare. Wyeth drew her in pencil first, then built her form in warm ochres and creams against a wall of cool gray-green. Light from the window models her shoulder and hip and leaves her left side in shadow; faint pencil lines in the panes sketch a landscape he never carried further.

The series passed from Wyeth to Leonard B. Andrews in 1986, to AM Art, Inc. in 1989 for a reported $40 million, and to a United States collector in 2005. This sheet was among roughly 140 works in Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures at the National Gallery of Art in 1987—an exhibition that drew more than 500,000 visitors and traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum—and is illustrated in John Wilmerding's accompanying catalogue. It will appear in Betsy James Wyeth's forthcoming catalogue raisonné.