Peter Hurd
 Peter was born in 1904 and died in 1984. Hurd has been called a Romantic Western figure, “Shelly in cowboy boots.” Hurd’s father was a lawyer in Boston but gave up his career to become a rancher in the Southwest. Hurd spent his childhood exploring the wide unfenced lands on a pony. He attended convent school and through his contacts with Mexican-American children became fluent in Spanish. The Mexican Revolution of 1916 gave him the desire to be a soldier so in 1917, he entered the New Mexico Institute for three years of preparatory study for West Point. Once a student at West Point, he was expelled for failing mathematics. After tutoring he was readmitted, but by this time he had already begun to paint. He painted and sold a painting for $10.00 to the officer commanding his cadet company. This made him realize what an exciting and infinite world painting could be.
In 1923, Hurd entered Haverford College, where he imitated Maxfield Parrish’s paintings and flunked his courses. He received a letter of introduction from a friend to N. C. Wyeth. Hurd was invited to spend the summer of 1924 studying at Chadd’s Ford. After this experience, Peter’s father gave permission for him to enter the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Hurd spent five years as a private pupil of N.C. Wyeth’s, it was at this time that Hurd met Andrew Wyeth, who was seven at the time.
In June of 1929, Hurd married N. C. Wyeth’s oldest daughter, Hennriette. At this time, he did free-lance work, mostly illustrations for children’s books. He was working in egg tempra and his first major work in this media was commissioned in 1933 by the New Mexico Military institute, a tryptich mural on gesso panels. Hurd chose as his subjects the three ethnic stocks of New Mexico; Indian, Spanish and Anglo-Saxon. In 1937 he had an exhibition in a New York Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
During WWII Hurd was an artist correspondent for Life Magazine. He worked doing portraits, flew on missions with the pilots, and made sketches for his paintings. After the war, Hurd set up his studio in a large room with high ceilings which was cluttered with tables, equipment, and shelves stacked with glass jars full of pigments for egg tempera. Hurd made sketches for his paintings in watercolor because the climate in New Mexico was much too dry for direct painting with egg tempra. Even the watercolors dried quickly so he had to spray the work to keep them moist and workable. His sketches were about 8” x 10” and had to be kept out of the sun while he worked on them to keep them from fading. Hurd drew directly from his subject in order to come close to the spirit of the object—unless it was a bucking horse in which case he would work from a photograph.
When his composition was ready, Hurd put gesso on masonite for the ground of his painting. He applied several layers, and each layer was applied in a different direction, sanded when dry, sponged with ammonia and rubbing alcohol. The artist projected his sketch of his composition with an opaque projector onto a gessoed board. He traced the composition and its details in pencil and when the layout was completed, he did under painting entirely in tones of gray sometimes using a diluted India ink. This gave his work a depth and richness to his tempera. The tempera was applied in a series of glazes, ever deeper and to lighten his work he may have used white but he tried to use as little white as possible to keep his paintings brighter. He kept his color high key because of the luminous quality of the land he was portraying. He said, “it is hard to tell anyone just how painting can be a religious experience, but it is to me.”
A special wing of Rosewell New Mexico Museum of Art is devoted to the painting of Peter Hurd. Hurd did suffer a career setback when he was commissioned to do a presidential portrait of LBJ, but it was rejected because LBJ failed to find an image and likeness that pleased him. As a result the picture was banished from government property. Hurd felt that reality for a painter, as for a poet, is always a matter of an inner vision of his own universe. A painting should be an intimate poem, one that invites repeated contemplation.
|
