Peter Hurd was born in 1904 in Roswell, New Mexico, after his parents' move there from the East Coast. He was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in 1921, but left two years later to begin an artistic career. After attending Haverford College, he studied under N. C. Wyeth and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1924 to 1926. In 1929, he married Wyeth's eldest child, Henriette, who was also a painter.
Henriette Wyeth was born in 1907 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Normal Art School in Boston in 1920, and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
During the mid-1930s they settled permanently in San Patricio, New Mexico. Hurd printed lithographs and painted portraits and landscapes in addition to federally-sponsored murals in post offices. Henriette was primarily known as a portrait painter.
Peter Hurd died in 1984.
From the guide to the Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth Hurd papers, 1917-1989, (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)
