LB2017.19.5261

LB2017.19.5261

Peter Hurd sits on the grass on a visit to his brother-in-law Andrew Wyeth in Cushing Maine. Peter Hurd (1904 – 1984) was a painter. He worked in a realist style and was known for painting portraits, and landscapes of New Mexico. Peter studied with N.C. Wyeth and married Wyeth’s eldest daughter Henriette, also a painter. They had three children together. As a war correspondent for Life Magazine during WWII, he went up in bombers and painted first person views looking out of the cockpit. Peter loved the outdoors and horseback riding, and was a skilled polo player, from his time at West Point. He celebrated and documented the people and landscapes of the southwest in paintings and lithographs, and also on an album of Spanish folk songs which he recorded. Ruohomaa met American realist painter Andrew Wyeth in 1947 through their mutual acquaintance, the sculptor George Curtis. The two enjoyed a long friendship and had a few eccentric adventures (see "Kosti Ruohomaa: Andrew Wyeth Collects a Hearse" and "Kosti Ruohomaa: Andrew Wyeth's Deserted House"). Arguably, they also shared some artistic affinities. For example, each had his own way of imbuing otherwise ordinary scenes with complex emotion, and both men often seemed to view their subjects as elemental forces. The painter invited the photographer to his family's summer home in Cushing, Maine for a visit of several days in June and July of 1951. The occasion yielded some notable portraits of Wyeth and his family; in effect, Ruohomaa was able to study Wyeth in one of his native habitats.