At Sentinel Ranch: Michael Hurd, Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth - Walking through History

Arts & Activities, March, 2004 by Barbara Herberholz

Bring your sketchbook and/or camera when you visit Sentinel Ranch in The Hondo Valley, which is located at the foot of the Capitan Mountains in southeastern New Mexico. The artist in you will compel your eyes to wander over the shadows that delineate the curving forms of the softly rounded hills, hills that are sprinkled with the deep green of pinon and cedar trees so reminiscent of landscapes by Peter Hurd and his son Michael.

Orchards in the valley provide a mixed palette of green, with scattered stables, corrals, aging fruit stands and, now and then, a twist of winding dusty road, a horse walker, and a windmill or two. Take in the rusting barbed wire fences, a scattering of cactus, hawks dipping and circling in the cloud streaked evening sky--a sky that sweeps from horizon to horizon, black at night with clear dots of stars, and at sunset shows a rosy glow that halos the contours of the hills.

Old buildings here and there remind us that we are in Lincoln County, land of the legendary Billy the Kid, and home for several members of America's most famous family of artists: Peter Hurd, his wife Henriette Wyeth, and present occupant, their son Michael.

We met with Michael Hurd, son of Peter Hurd (1904-1984) and Henriette Wyeth Hurd (1907-1997), in the family's spacious compound. We were given a tour, entering through a gate into the patio and thence to the kitchen, dining area, living room, bedroom. and on to the greenhouse. which produced the flowers that Henriette used for her still-life paintings.

Being in Peter's (now Michael's) studio was especially intriguing. It was dominated by a large cartoon for a mural by Peter on one wall, along with a number of canvases by Michael, a scattering of books on artists (Vermeer, Velasquez, Brueghel), and a table with a working palette and a jumble of tubes of paint.

We were visited by a friendly German shepherd named Chacho as we sat in the cool shade of the patio, while Michael reminisced about his family, his childhood, and what it is like being part of several generations of America's foremost dynasty of artists.

His grandfather was N.C. Wyeth, well known for his book illustrations, as well as for his powerful personality and for the innovative environment that he provided at the Chadds Ford family home in Pennsylvania.

Henriette was the oldest of the five Wyeth children, all of whom grew up in this invigorating and creative world. Henriette's siblings, Carolyn, and Andrew--also excelled in art--while Ann became a musician and composer, and Nathaniel pursued a successful career in scientific inventions.

Michael remarked concerning N.C.'s tragic and untimely death in 1945 that a family friend had said, "It took a train to kill N.C."

Michael's childhood was not isolated in that numerous cultured and intellectual guests with their lively conversation frequently enjoyed the hospitality at Sentinel Ranch. He remembers his father as being a Renaissance man who tied all kinds of information together and who often spoke in a language punctuated with verbal descriptions in color and form. "He was a man who loved music, literature, optics, science, and including botany, he knew the medicinal value of plants." He once pointed out to Michael that the willow bark was used for headaches by Indians and early Hispanics, for example.

Peter Hurd was born in Roswell, N.M. When he left West Point after two years to pursue an art career, he became N.C. Wyeth's private pupil with N.C. warning him that studying under him would be tougher than West Point, a warning that proved to be true.

Peter knew he would return to his beloved Southwest one day, where the light, air and colors of the landscape were startling. He wore his cowboy boots and hat all the while he lived in Chadds Ford. It was here that he and Henriette fell in love and married in 1929. Ten years later, Peter and his family moved back to San Patricio, N.M., and the Sentinel Ranch where Peter and Henriette developed their well-known artistic styles.

Peter Hurd was a devotee of Constable and Turner and had a real feeling for the New Mexico landscape--in egg tempera and oil, watercolor and mixed media. He was at his best "when he painted what he loved--from the heart." When he arrived in Chadds Ford in 1922, he began studying under N.C. and soon introduced young Andrew to egg tempera, a medium that Wyeth mastered and for which he has gained international fame. And in return, it was Andrew who stimulated Peter's interest in watercolor.

Peter also introduced Andrew to fencing, and later, during one of Hurd's absences, Andrew took fencing lessons from the captain of the University of Pennsylvania team. Andrew remembers with satisfaction, "Pete came back and said, 'Let's fence.' Well, he was shocked. I fenced him right off the porch."

Henriette herself had N.C.'s determination and his belief in inherited talent. A crippled right hand from a childhood bout with polio did not prevent her from painting. A special room at the Hurd compound now houses exercise machines that previously held her therapeutic swimming pool. She attended the Normal Art School in Boston at the age of 13 and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, later continuing her art under her father's guidance.