Michener Art Museum
The Michener Art Museum highlights Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd in a retrospective
The Michener Art Museum highlights Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd in a retrospective
Thirty years ago, an exhibition, An American Vision:three Generations of Wyeth Art, brought focused on the influences of the males in the great American artistic lineage—n.c.wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth.the women in the family had an important influence, however and established their own reputations as artists.andrew and Henriette’s sister Carolyn introduced Jamie to oils, and Henriette’s husband, Peter Hurd, introduced N.C. and Andrew to egg tempera.
An exhibition, Magical & Real: Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd,a Retrospective, rectifies part of the omission. On view at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, from January 21 to May 6, it will travel to the Roswell Museum and Art Center from June 15 to September 16. Co-curated by Kirsten M. Jensen, chief curator at the Michener, and Sara Woodbury, curator of collections and exhibitions at Roswell, the exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated, scholarly catalog. Jensen explains,“very little attention has been given to N.C.’S role in shaping and guiding the artistic development and career of his daughters Henriette,ann and Carolyn. Magical & Real is the
first exhibition to explore the work and career of N.C.’S eldest child, Henriette, and N.C.’S student Peter Hurd, whom Henriette married in 1929.
It’s also the first scholarly project to probe family archives to flesh out their relationships to other family members, particularly to N.C. and Andrew.” Henriette Wyeth (1907-1997) and Peter Hurd (1904-1984) met when both were studying with N.C. Henriette was from the bucolic and fertile Brandy wine valley and Hurd from the rugged desert of Roswell, New Mexico. Jensen notes, “This exhibition engages the tensions between eastern and western arts communities, tensions that permanently marked the lives and careers of Hurd and Wyeth. Henriette’s work changed substantially in both style and tone following their move to New Mexico. Magical & Real will broaden the awareness of the entire scope of the couple’s work in the regions with which they are most closely associated.”
Perhaps Hurd’s most iconic image is A Portrait of Gerald Marr, 1952. In 2009 Marr recalled,“this was a special prize commissioned from Peter
Hurd in 1952. I was 14 or 15. It was a prize for winning the all-around at the kids’ rodeo in the 12 through 15 age group. It just happened to be me.” Marr later became a successful racehorse trainer.the confident young horseman stands against the southern New Mexico landscape with an aura of ease and pride in his accomplishment. Henriette was the only Wyeth to leave the East Coast and fell in love with the new environment of the desert Southwest. She was known for her imaginative still lifes and for her portraits.among her sitters were Helen Hayes, Pat Nixon, family friend Paul Horgan and members of her own family. Her Portrait of Peter Hurd, 1936, illustrates her Wyeth genes and training and depicts her husband among field sketches and a painting of a New Mexico landscape.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Horgan wrote biographies of both artists. He quoted Henriette, “The reason I paint flowers is that I see them fading.this reminds me of the eternally renewed, the spring time, all of that, because I feel death and disaster lurk right behind them.”
Yet, her philosophy was,“i don’t know what is important and what is unimportant, so I call it all immensely important.”