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New Mexico Artists
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New Mexico Stories: Peter Hurd, San Patricio Artist (1904 – 1984)
The name given to him soon after his birth at Roswell, New Mexico, was Harold Hurd, Jr., but he was called “Pete.” He legally changed his name to Peter when he was in his 20’s. Peter came from a family with a strong military tradition – a Hurd had fought in every American conflict dating back to the French & Indian War (1754 – 1763) – and studied at the New Mexico Military Institute before he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West point at age 17. Two years later he resigned – leaving the Academy on good terms – and entered Haverford College, Pennsylvania, where he studied painting. He left there to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He became acquainted with famed painter N. C. Wyeth in 1923 and soon fell in love with Wyeth’s oldest daughter,Henriette. They married in 1929.
His work gained national fame by the late 1930’s and he served as an artist and war correspondent for Life Magazine during World War II. He built the Sentinel Ranch at San Patricio, west of Roswell in the 1930’s and some of his best work was done there. Hurd received national attention in January 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson declared that the official portrait of him, done by Hurd at the President’s request, was “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” The Johnson family rejected it. Hurd, for his part, retorted that he only one session with the president during which Johnson fell asleep. The painting, though, was sold to the Smithsonian Institution and hangs today in its National Portrait Gallery. Hurd died near Roswell of Alzheimer’s disease, which had effectively prevented him from painting for the last ten years of his life. His final paining was a watercolor called “The Three Horsemen,” completed in 1975.
Albuquerque Journal, July 10, 19984
Handbook of Texas Online s.v. “Hurd, Peter”
Horgan, Peter Hurd
Metzger, My Land
Tulsa World, Jan. 6, 1967
Text from the NEW MEXICO HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES, by Don Bullis. Publisher: Rio Grande Books
Image from American Gallery
From Territory to Statehood: Artist of New Mexico
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New Mexico Stories
A series of compelling accounts of life in old New Mexico featuring brief biographies of WOMEN and ARTISTS who were born when New Mexico was a territory and lived to see it become a state, plus vignettes of life experiences as told IN THEIR OWN WORDS.
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