A gifted, restless, in many ways likable artist, Jamie Wyeth is the subject of a retrospective — his first in more than 30 years — at the Museum of Fine Arts. The show, which was curated by Elliot Bostwick Davis, the museum’s chair of the Art of the Americas, is full of incidental fascinations. But is it a body of work worthy of such lavish treatment in one of the world’s great museums?

I’m scratching my head. Wyeth, who has just turned 68, can paint. He can draw. He has lived an interesting and impressive life. But what’s missing from this show, which covers six decades and is made up of more than 100 oils, watercolors, drawings, and even a couple of humorous tableaux vivant, is a sense that it all adds up to something original — something that goes beyond the frisson of family gossip, the sentimentality of a compelling life story, or the romance of a storied place.