Peter Hurd

You You You You

You It is here at the Sentinel Ranch in San Patricio, New Mexico that the artist Peter heard lived and worked This revealing self-portrait painted in 1956 in egg tempura Represents heard honest direct approach to painting He was born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1904

Educated at the New Mexico Military Institute and at West Point From there he sought out NC Wyeth the patriarch of the Wyeth clan and became his pupil There he met and married Wyeth's eldest daughter Henriette herself an accomplished painter Missing only from the artist studio is the artist himself Here he brought as many field sketches and notes Many gathered from his own beloved Sentinel Ranch in the Hondo Valley of New Mexico To transform them into lasting impressions He is best known for his landscapes in the mediums of tempura and watercolor But he is also an accomplished portraitist, muralist, and lithographer His work radiates light clearly it also exudes life, vitality, and sear honesty in its realism

Much like his own congenial and famous personality Paul Horgan, Pulitzer Prize winning author historian and novelist First met Peter Hurd as a fellow cadet at the Military Institute They developed from that early beginning a lifelong friendship marked with collaboration and dedication You know it's extraordinary to think of the length of time that my life at Peter

Hurd's life had been parallel and in fact deeply involved with each other Actually it was in the fall of 1919 that we met And it wasn't very long really till the essential nature of our connection made itself clear In our common tastes are our united interests in many of the things that none of the other cadets really cared much about We both read voraciously all the time we both drew all the time drawing pictures in excessively and animated by By certainly one of the most vivid temperaments I've ever known Peter was was himself a A legendary creature really almost everybody succumbed immediately to his Appeal and his charm his looks he he was

He was extraordinarily appealing looking as a youngster as a young fellow I once characterized him in the early chads for days When he astounded the local and somewhat aristocratic country life all around me by appearing in New Mexico attire which is to say high heel boots and and the work pants blue jeans and checkered shirts and so forth and extravagant Texas shaped straw hats but with all this the the guarantee of animation the physical style of Of the young vigorous creature I call him Shelley in cowboy boots Because he he had all this sensitivity in the lyric grace of the poet And yet he also affected and amused everyone with with the the costume that People thought of as the western and which he quite deliberately Thought with him and he came east. I don't think it was in any sense an affectation

It's it's always a little irritating to me when I hear him referred to as a cowboy artist This is the way newspapers often treat him Identify him But it that isn't an accurate description of course the The prime concern in any discussion to Peter would have to do with his work And one one always tries to sink of the determining Factor the the great and closing element of his talent Of his vision it is it is the vision finally that That governs and I think the it is the great element of light that one thinks of First and constantly in connection with Peter's painting I don't know of a Contemporary painter who is so wonderfully captured the atmospheric effects of light and particularly the the power of light to To bring a motion out of the subject matter in landscape

That presupposes of course that he loves this landscape deeply understands it superbly And reveals it with a the almost the eye of a bird in the sense of detail far or near At the same time and closing it in an atmosphere so So powerful in terms of the Revivalatory values of light That the pictures themselves seem to contain light. This has been said about not only by me, but by several other people In discussing him that That in a room with a painting of Peter's one always has the feeling that the light is emanating from the surface That it is not simply something that he is captured and painted and inserted within the frame But that the picture itself is a source of light. I've noticed it in changes of light in a room, for example Say his twilight approaches The qualities the values the contrast of the light in his work Remain as powerful as they do in full light and within the house or within the room itself

And that's a marvelous property it seems to me to be able to To translate so every lesson so abstract the thing is light Capture it and make it seem to live again Not just in the power of revealing shapes and forms But in being a great source of illumination in itself It's interesting to think of the Position he occupies in terms of style The natural world and the objects that contained and the experiences it meant for Peter Have always remained so full of energy and vitality and meaning for him that to translate their likenesses The paint them as exactly and as beautifully as in you how was for him a fulfilling Mission Peter never never wavered in his devotion to his own vision I think his influences were

were Those based on the visions of great masters his small field sketch notebooks contained dozens and hundreds of pages of Impressions taken in the in the open in in nature Which critics have found worthy to stand with the pages by similar pages by by Turner and Constable who were two great painters at Peter studied constantly and dearly loved and devoted to One of his one of his great variations in style Came when he was under necessity to learn to how to paint watercolor the funny wonder broad for life magazine and for the Air Force To paint the experience of the war He had to make immediate impressions He had not to use a camera that wouldn't do it that the camera would not convey the feeling It took the immediacy of his sensation to get onto paper So watercolor was the answer the result was that he was able to make

Superb instant records of people in their acts and their occasions the scenes of war the gear of war all these things Which spoke to him directly Out of his experience as a as an ex cadet so he brought a great great sympathy to this subject matter and Increasing skill in use of watercolor I've always felt that um a great a great part of of Peter's Wonderful feeling for landscape as a painter as an artist came from From more than merely the aesthetic interest Or let's put it the other way that the aesthetic interest arose from perhaps Another aspect of how he felt about the land. He was he was a deeply convinced conservationist And he worked actively as a member of Of the organizations that that strove to restore the land to its Integrity

I don't know anyone who had who had more versatility really in In What the daily act of life put it that way The brandy wine valley at Chad's Ford, Pennsylvania Here Herd took lessons from NC Wyeth in this farmhouse studio where his brother-in-law Andrew Wyeth was also a pupil Because this was a room that the Peter Herd used as a studio In fact, I learned to Paint tempera under him in this room. I often think of it as the years go by What remarkable experiences we Had together here in the brandy wine valley I was six years old When I first met Peter Herd Came here young man of I think he was about 19

And he was wonderful to all of us kids in the family vital young man very handsome blonde Could ride a horse bear back and we were all enthralled by him as we still are It's a remarkable person It's it's it's very moving to me to be able to speak about him But apart from my emotional tie with him is this Very profound feeling I have about the best of his painting and this I can't emphasize more I don't know if the story about how he met my sister has ever been told He was on his way down here from Philadelphia on the train a night train and It stopped here Chad's Ford and he asked the conductor

As they left a wall wall, which is about 20 of 15 miles away Could you tell me where NC Wyeth's house is from the station in Chad's Ford And he said young man if you ask the young lady who's sitting next to you on the seat there She can tell you that's Mr. Wyeth's daughter and it turned out to be Henriette And that's how they met And I remember the day he arrived that evening I remember his lean figure Wave is dressed in high heel boots And he had on a I remember he had on a fur fur jacket Actually it was a vest with yellow Tortor shell buttons And of course he had his large hat and we kids were enthralled by him Really crawled all over him as the years went by and now he would take him on picnics and now Went swimming together

We even got him to Ride the horses down in Chad's Ford and the field and he used to bulldog the local cattle here and we had Cars would stop and we'd pass out the hat and get money for him It was really a remarkable childhood. He he made us all very alive and very exciting Then of course his years went by I watched what he was working in he came back with the formula of interested in temper panels and he made his own panels here in the seller of this very building He would make a mix up the jessau Primalba and whiting with the gelatin glue Fishkin glue and we'd coat panels So I learned the whole process of painting in tempera from Peter Hurd The dry color which he would bring from the mexico and he got from India and it was a

It was amazing and He I'm a member of the first little panel I did it was a seascape because that's been a lot of time in Maine and He showed me how to mix the color and I'd take notations. I still have some of them in my files I've for how much egg to mix with certain colors and how to grind them uh And he unlocked a whole new quality of color oil paint did not appeal to me. I tried to work in it But watercolor peel to me and egg tempera is the closest To watercolor really and then I build it up slowly. I finally He taught me the basic qualities of the medium and then He would go back to the mexico and then I slowly evolved my own method of working But uh I have

I'm deeply indebted to his That early training he gave me And not only in how to paint but also as a young man growing up He He was uh I can't think of a finer person to have for a young man to have As a guidance in Peter Hurd Nellie is is is the perfect color this my dog here in my hand. There's a perfect color For egg temper. I've painted her many times and this is a color that Peter heard uh Brought me some yellow ochre and raw sienna from his they dug up in a deposit on his ranch in New Mexico and I had it all all attested and reground it and I still have a great deal of it and I use it whenever I paint her because this is this is a quality of Of that pigment from his ranch and I can't get any place else this quality of ochre that he

This deposit of ochre that he found it was real organic a real organic color So I call her really at an egg temper painting in that right now. Hmm? Need great But he talked to me uh the Peter Hurdett about the great qualities the temper have A real Pure quality of color today with oil paints. We mix it up and make it all muddy But in the early florentine man they they realized the uh How difficult it was to get a beautiful Indian red or a Teravert or a raw sienna and they would preserve it pure and that's why they're paintings Sing to this day and this is what Peter heard did Teach to me. I think there is a quality of temper when it's used right that absolutely is

You can't touch it with any other medium And Peter heard unlocked all this to me In 1944 when uh, Peter had been commissioned by life magazine to go with the 8th Air Force uh, he came down here and It was a very interesting experience of Peter had taught me about egg tempera And I've been very much a student with him and of course at that time I'd always been working in watercolor. Peter had never done any watercolor Will he had very early when he first came here done a few but there were more gouache Watercolors and pure watercolor and he came to me he said Andy I've decided I realized that I've got to have a medium that I can do on the spot for first-hand studies And he said could I go out with you and paint some watercolors and you could give me some very important

Information on the medium and I said gosh, I'd be honored So Pete and I was in it was around Christmas time and he was leaving in a couple of weeks for London With four-life magazine and he had a week or so to do this and I said come on. Let's go out So we'd go out and we'd bundle ourselves up and Put plenty of alcohol in their water so that the watercolors wouldn't freeze In fact, we tried even drink in some of the alcohol to keep ourselves warm, but that didn't work Anyway, I remember one day we were up on a hill over looking a brandy wine and There were skaters on this The pond or slaw below and I said come on This is a marvelous thing to do the lighter the early morning light on these skaters with a long shadows cast on this Ice black ice it was really unbelievable and so I started to watercolour and Pete went a ways away He started one and we were working away

I walked over once a while and they'd come at me and go back and work on mine As we were there the owner of the place Walked out and they he I saw I'm talking to Pete watching Pete very closely and Finally he walked over to me and he said Well, and that mr. Herod is really doing a beautiful picture and he said you're doing very nice He said you keep it up you'll be almost as good as he is if you keep that a young man So right after that I thought well, I'm too good a teacher now on I'm never gonna teach again Pete sold his watercolour to this man first watercolour he did under me So I felt that I'm an expert teacher of watercolour painting. I remember I about froze up and so did Pete We came back here and sat over these this Keeter register here to get one. This is the same register that was there at that time. Pete was a very serious person about about his painting. I never think of his work as

Not even regional really. I think it goes beyond that the best of his work His portraits are very penetrating truthful unrelenting uh And vital interpretations of things that meant a great deal to him He he painted here. He did illustrations. Father got him work to do for publishers He did a lot of book jackets children's books But along with it he was painting landscape here in the valley evening scenes night scenes uh autumn scenes winter scenes summer scenes And as he developed He realized That he must go back to his home ground of New Mexico Which was so right

Did absolutely the right thing to go there because right overnight he found himself His country unlocked him I think uh Peter I think what he's often talked to me about was The great light of New Mexico the luminosity and I think that's why the medium of temporal was made for that country His evening skies or early morning skies and Feeling of light radiating from within I think this is what his best work has Uh that that makes it uh Miles apart from What other people try to do have done out there He he he caught this subtle quality of light Even in the shadows as luminosity And this is very much Peter heard

And that's why people that try to imitate him just miss it completely Absolutely miss it I think he's only important painter out of the southwest. I haven't seen anyone at touch as him I to me he he has quality Whether it's just a simple mountain in the late afternoon light or evening light With the mist rising with the cottonwood trees reflected in Some of those Irrigation ditches All of this is so subtly put forward that it's to me It's just Well to me it's it's it's a soul of Peter heard As a portraitist uh Peter isn't isn't I guess he wasn't really

Celebrated until the the commission came from the White House Historical Association to uh to paint President Johnson I happen to be staying at San Papricio at the ranch with the herds at the time And I drove into El Paso to go to Washington to for sittings with President Johnson And I met him three days later on his return at this at the airport driving back to the ranch I found a different friend I never saw him look more exhausted More frustrated and finally he he said to me uh That these conditions were absolutely Impossible to get what he really needed For the portrait that is to say formal sittings but the President's schedule was so heavy so intense. He was so busy That uh Peter had to catch him on the run. I believe he stayed in the White House And uh could observe President Johnson on occasion But I believe that he had a total of less than half an hour in maybe 20 25 minutes

When he had the subject of the portrait all to himself and with With within those limitations My feeling is that he got an extremely fine like this. I've seen the portrait I saw it when it was on exhibition in Philadelphia and I was present at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington When um it was it was formally unveiled as part of the The nation's heritage and it looked exceedingly well then and people have seen it since and say it It makes a fine impression. I think it's a very good like this And uh, I think the nation can be satisfied that it will it will stand as a good record of Lyndon Johnson In this 1966 film footage appears anderton of ABC Interviewed heard for the national news A portrait painter must not only paint a physical likeness But must set forth the essence of his subject's personality Few have been able to fathom the essence of Lyndon Bane's Johnson

But this artist must Peter Hurd who was painting the official portrait of the president Mr. Hurd how much did Mr. Johnson pose for this portrait In effect very little Because to pose for a portrait you have to sit in the proper light and hold more or less the Definite pose that the artist is assigned Speak sure when you when you wish to and the conversation goes along you can smoke if you want But you do have to sit in a definite light and look in a definite direction. This he did not do as far as the hands are concerned um I understand that you are using a model for the hands Yes, I've been lucky enough to find the man whose hands are very similar to the president's hands And he is a neighbor mind named Bud Payne a rancher who's with us today And uh the rest of the uh portrait you've largely painted from photographs Right to entirely so yes Mr. Hurd when painting a portrait you have to capture your subject's personality now. How do you see Lyndon Johnson? In this portrait

Here's I've tried to represent him as I feel he is a man of tremendous imagination And a great vision I want in his face express both his imagination and the visionary quality in the distant look in his eyes and in the Rather thoughtful pose that I have him in this thing I would like to suggest that to whoever sees him in the future assuming this painting becomes What it's supposed to become part of the White House collection But does still a tremendous feeling of strength in the in the jaw of our face very true You know, I've described him at times to people as being a Roman Texan. He looks like a Roman Emperor in these sometimes Well now are you painting this also from photographs entirely alas except for Mr. Payne who is here to helping me with the hands uh It is from a series a vast series of arched save props close to a hundred photographs that Mrs. Johnson was kind enough to get together and send me And I've poured over those photographs literally literally by the hour We're climbing looking at him hour after hour with the view of

Of learning his head learning his physiognomy better and better more and more What is the difference between uh having a portrait painted and just having a color in photograph taking? Well, I'd like to do to take a few moments to tell a public about that. I think it's something a very few people understand When an artist is painting out subject Every time he looks down at the palette and mixes a new little swatch of color and looks up again There's another little flicker of expression on his model's face usually slight But there it is ever none of our faces are absolutely dead pan and static all the time So with luck he in the course of thousands of impressions and thousands of applications of color on a portrait Creates a synthesis or an approximation of the character through many many many observations many many many minute as well as broad observations and notations in the form of of these flickering bits of expression on that model's face

Now in the case of a camera for better or for worse. It's once like that and sometimes it's perfectly marvelous as in the case of the carish one of Winston Churchill or the The fleeting expression of a child's smile will say that it's caught forever by camera It works both ways, but the artist has no alternative but to reply to to rely on many many many Hundreds of even thousands of impressions and hope to get the final personality through those Mrs. Johnson warned me. She's a perfectly marvelous person very warm very sympathetic and Couldn't have been nicer to my wife and me on the many cases we've seen her She said Peter. I warn you. This is going to be the most frustrating The most absolutely impossible job you ever tackled in your life. I warn you now You're just going to feel fit to be tied sometimes So I said well miss Johnson. Thank you for that warning, but I'm hard to frustrate I must say though she had a permit President Johnson declared the portrait to be the ugliest thing he'd ever seen and rejected it as the official White House portrait For more than a year Peter heard has been watching and observing and painting president Johnson

Now the end is in sight by the end of this month the westmost famous contemporary painter will have finished the portrait of the westmost Famous contemporary personality appears and it in ABC news san patricio The circumstances were all as the world does very difficult It's a pity that That the outcome had had unfortunate repercussions In any case It was nothing easy to do and he did it with as much grace as he could Henriette Wyeth heard married Peter in 1929 and they later moved to the Sentinel ranch in New Mexico We lived in Chad's Ford Pennsylvania very near his teacher and my father NC Wyeth home my mother and father and brothers and sisters We were there for about five years

After we were married and he of course was studying under NC Wyeth and my father required absolute dedication and Intense work and Peter gave it And I must say That my father was very well rewarded he took no other student than Peter heard and when Peter appeared at the age of 20 very handsome Lovely body narrow hips almost like a dancer except that he was a horseman with slightly bow legs I he was he was just an enchanting alive young man very well read very modest And totally endearing but of course of pity turned out to be along with A great painter of New Mexico. He turned out to be one of the great playboys of the western world also

It's people were around him constantly. There was always gayity He sang Mexican songs of the same high Tenor that Mexicans themselves sing Peter was a very fine horseman you Absolutely beautiful and he had to have horses always around him And was a great horseman and a very Dashing and romantic figure on his horse Petey would be on his horse in the afternoon and he took his little watercolor box in a special leather case on the side of a Western saddle when he went painting So he had the the materials at hand and if he'd go out and ride all over the hills and bring back some very beautiful rich little water colors or studies Not a cowboy a horseman He was occasionally

Called a cowboy painter and he said, you know, I'm not a cowboy. I never was that good Trying to follow herd is like running after a will of the west, you know And sometimes of course he would go abroad as A correspondent for life magazine and he would go to India for them and all over the world for four and five months at a time And I would run this place here And it was very necessary for Petey to get away and to be quite Quite free very important that he'd be free And fortunately I recognized that I don't know why I was so smart Petey would come to my students I mean, I've got to have you look at this A portrait that he was doing or a landscape We met on the common ground of is this a good painting? Does it express you? Is it painted well? Where is it faulty or thin?

And this was true of him coming to my studio too constantly did it and of course that is why I I feel that I've lived really and extraordinarily Fascinating Sometimes rather bumpy life He was really A remarkably knowledgeable and never boring man I can't think of a thing that he didn't turn his very brilliant regard on burned himself up in in his work which is the only way to do it You do anything supremely well and and with feeling and with a sense of responsibility towards the people you're painting for Or a sense of responsibility towards God on high or the earth or life itself You have to do just as well as you possibly can Peter heard taught them how to look at a windmill

And a flat plain with cloud shelters going across it and perhaps capitan and the in the distance his favorite mountain He taught them to look at it and see the great beauty The great every day realism of beauty and life and it also It points up the fact that we're here a very very short time It seems to me to be one should be awed by any good direct honest life that you can possibly lead and I Peter was always celebrating Really the beauty of life the camaraderie of friends and That was something people never forgot the feeling they had around PD Out of

Peter's great interest in the in the Renaissance technique of of temper on jesseau came a further development for him in in in a technical way in the way of medium For that of when fresco that is a wet fresco the The the art of bureau decoration wall painting In which the the wet plaster is applied daily only as far as the painter will be able to cover it He he studied very closely how to achieve this surface and did a good many Good many murals in the southwest With the assistance of a couple of competent painters who wanted to work with him. It's a big mechanical job to do But it seems to me the apex of this aspect of his art is in Lubbock in Lubbock, Texas at the University there In one of the in what I believe is the old museum building which is still of course in use of another purpose But the rotunda which Peter decorated

And 16 joined panels in a in a drum shape really up to a dome He's done an extra I think the most significant and beautiful General decoration in our country um he took He took for each panel a characteristic Founder of the region of the west Texas plains He took them by vocation the doctor the banker the teacher the chronicler all such categories And showed them with with what in medieval times would have been called their attributes Saints always were shown with their identifying Instrument or or event or whatever Peter had the attributes of of these people as their backgrounds He took local models And in some cases still living Were pioneer people whom he could actually use otherwise he used historical reference

For the likenesses or for the types that he wanted So the one that one has is a sense of the founding population Of a great area of the southwest In all all its primal human Simplicity of need and fulfillment of purpose This was an act in the first place of great human respect Secondly I thought quite marvelously the device that he united these panels with Was again the landscape Although each panel has a different subject matter and a different representation of a A kind of life and need of life and act of life He has used a common landscape that the travels around behind all the figures and their attributes So there's an unbroken circle as if you were standing in the middle of a great plane And slowly revolving to see the horizon that same horizon it closes all of these all of these representations But still one other marvelous unifying factor

Is that he takes you through the cycle of the day and the night In one panel you will begin with dawn and you will go right around through night And back again to dawn so that the entire Grum the entire cylinder of the of the imaginary demarcation of that area It closes you as well as the people You go from Calm to storm you go from light to dark you go from sunlight to starlight It's it's a most beautiful device To give a sense of the amplitude of the area Metaphorically I suppose you could say that it's It's an expression of A lifelong variety of a human existence This is these people drawn with the deepest sympathy And again, I said at the beginning

In in in when fresco in true fresco pain That is the wet fresco technique So that he was one of the few contemporary artists who undertook that medium and I think made a very beautiful and significant contribution to contemporary American art in it John Meggs artist writer collector friend neighbor of herds worked on the pioneer mural at Texas Tech with him My first Knowledge that Pete was interested in plant life was of course when I met him in the way This was a very important facet of Pete's life I think perhaps the most important thing certainly to me was that it carried not just into his own little special Underground world here, but his interest in plants in general, particularly needing plants many a time I've seen him bring into the studio

Some species that he couldn't readily identify and get out the books and pour over them and he not only knew Common names, but he knew the Latin names and he was very proud of his ability to Tell you the Latin name of a particular plant When Pete and I worked together on the mural in Texas Tech the pioneer mural He did a great number of field studies of all sorts of plants And these are now part of the permanent collection of the museum West Texas Museum in love and he very carefully Would do drawings and then he would of course do them in watercolour So the color would be right and these were incorporated of course in the fine press Tom Babers whose property borders the herds developed an interest in polo through his friendship with Peter He jumped me up to

Play polo Well, I'm born and reared on a ranch. I was western boy Never saw but one game of polo in my life so Pete had him at WPA polo team four redder brothers Jose Manuel Aristil and Fertoso And Pete had a little Feel over on the hillside Pete let no poly out 19 years old branded on both sides Called him Pakers Pete walked over and hand me a stick and said well We want you in on this not knowing anything about polo When he handed me that knowledge I asked him I said Which end of this thing to you Hit a ball with you know

Kind of like a croquet monitor Pete says you turn it crossway and then you'll have trouble hitting it Well, I found that to be true And we set up Tournament dates generally start the first June every year and play through every weekend for Labor Day Pete and I was team mates Oh first 20 25 years we'd pick up fellas to play with us Same me like we lost more game wherever won but one thing about Pete he was a good loser Pete would get most of the thing right just like on windmill Pete got criticized from the general public He had painted a windmill and had a long lead pipe where the water came from the well To the reservoir They growing up on a ranch like I did. I've seen it many many time

The windmill wheel would stop turning and there'd be water running out of the lead pipe Pete got letters. He got phone calls I'd like they said we'd like to know how that water's run out of that lead pipe when that wheel's not attorney Well, the people didn't know that it took a while for that lead pipe to drain that water up Ever so many things over a period of years People see ask me and Sun was very good, especially confirmation of a horse And I don't know Pete and on Red Bull said the hardest thing yet to paint is a horse And so many times it can get everything except one leg or the withers air

And there's a average Pete painted good horses real good But I've looked at the many pictures. I've said on a horse. Pete had painted them I don't know what pictures he stuck me in He had me sitting on a great quarter horse one day Sitting crossways in the saddle male ball in the horses hip and I guess it's there for an hour Horses well bro well, man But Pete and I spent a minute pleasant hour together One is good in neighbors is you'd ever expect to have The biggest people I've ever met been over with Pete and I'm yet Federal judges movie stars People of all walks alive

The The herds eldest son Peter Wyeth heard chose music as a career as a harpsichordist and musicologist I was born in 1930 and at that time my father was living in Pennsylvania having just finished studying NCY at the illustrator my grandfather And we lived in a small farmhouse not too far from where NCYeth lived in the early days I think that one of my earliest recollections is a moonlight ride with my father bear back He would hold me in front of him and we'd go Leaping over fences in the in the moonlight and I can remember hanging on to his thoroughbred mayors main which would then was not roached or cut short thank heavens And I must have been old three or four years old. That was my first horse experience and of course he taught me to ride Later when we all moved to new Mexico And he also taught me to play the guitar Before I could really read music very well

I'd had some piano experience at age seven that time and he taught me the first few chords in the guitar He loved to sing Mexican songs and as well as certain American folk songs And I think that I gained a very intense and keen interest in American folk music Not so much intellectually but rather for the quality of the folk songs themselves I think from him at least that was a good beginning We had much in common in this way many people think of my father at least a number the number of them have always gotten an impression that he was kind of a A simple cowboy sort of thing which really couldn't be further from the truth He was not that at all he was a marvelous mimic and he can put on a southwestern accent that would stand you on your ear But as a person his mind was I'd say it was so towards the erudite in its its inclinations and Much of this I think is lost in the popular image that many people have

Of him anyway, it certainly influenced me and my interests in musicology And in composition and things of that sort Daughter Carol Rogers is an artist she posed for both her father and her mother's works What a wonderful place to grow up I can't think of any nicer spot to have been a child We moved here when I was five years old from Pennsylvania and I've always had horses around me and dogs and uh A river to wait in and swim in and uh A wonderful imaginative life uh This was the probably the greatest legacy my father left me And the more I sit here the more I think of how how much he he affected me

Oh posing for my father well I was the guinea pig because I was usually the only one here My brother was away at school my younger brother was not yet born And so both of my parents used me um To be very honest Posing for my father was not nearly as much fun as it was posing for my mother, but my father Uh, it was very difficult and he would get very cross and very irritated if I move too much Which you know at the age of 15 or 11 you you know inevitably will Now I see those portraits and uh I think gosh what what a wonderful statement you know that that was me back then and I remember how I was and Um what what I like to think of as the greatest period of my father's painting were the portraits That he did of Jose who was the foreman

um very colorful marvelous looking man uh and uh What I have to think of are the beautiful quick flashing water colors that he did many times as notes Those are absolutely beautiful and I think unparalleled Mike heard the youngest son carries on the art tradition My father's work was always very important to me whether or not I really realized it But I really think as a painter the main thing his main impact on me were his very fresh water colors the uh Quick very free sketches which I think really are brilliant and I think Undoubtedly At some point will be seen on a par with uh the works of Turner the great English water colorist uh Winslow Homer And those of my uncle Andrew wife He was once criticized for having no philosophy of art and he said

He used to tell me he took five minutes and he went over to a corner And he scribbled something down and he rethought it and rewrote it and finally came back and The the basic terms were um something to the effect that uh art His man is the enduring emotional responsive man to his surroundings He certainly used tempera to great advantage he used the The clarity of tempera to depict these blue skies of New Mexico and More than anything I think as a native New Mexican He really appreciated the clarity of light in this country and I uh I think his most significant paintings were a beautiful um Translation of that light There is one very specific painting which is called golden white twilight and

It shows the hills in the Hondo Valley here from the the northern valley the Bonita Valley and It's a very Pivotal time in the late afternoon when the The sun has descended and is only lighting the the mountain tops but It is rendered with such Consumnet water color skill and such feeling that I think it's probably a prime example of his work The the light is brilliantly rendered as uh As a whole i think I think Everett just about everything my father Did for us was very positive. I have very strong Feelings for my father. He's very much missed here If I were going to summarize My feeling about Peter heard as a painter The ultimate value

I think I could best do it if I if I read a Brief passage which I wrote about him once Because I think it catches the essence of The value Very difficult to catch I think I'm not sure I've called it in words, but especially as I can I've concluded this In the Peter heard gallery of the Roswell Museum Which houses frequently changed displays of his work from the permanent collection Is a huge tempera panel Called the gate and beyond done in 1953 It shows a ranch gate reaching across the whole foreground A road runs under the gate And straight away from the beholder And passed a distant cluster of ranch buildings Until it reaches infinity It is a painting of great scale devoted to the pure and simple The color of everything man made in it is paled

By the action of sun, wind, sand, grout The grain of the gateboards has seemed close to Far away the horizon and its mountain meet the pale sky in familiar mystery This picture with its title the gate and beyond Can stand as typical of the double purpose of Herod's vision To see what is there to be seen by all And to see it more perfectly than we can And so to indicate for us What lies in the common world unseen Beyond the gate of ordinary perception What gives such an act of visions lasting power to speak to us And remind us of things we know Is the artist's respect beyond himself for the objective world All that matters is That in his spirit he be great enough And in his technical capacity he be equal to the demands of his own vision For his world view of the world to prevail

For the present it is enough And it is the highest of honors in our power to bestow To speak of Peter Herod as an artist of the truth Who looks at the gate and sees beyond He sees the golden guy And he sees hisophane Became his pure狸 The spirit has showed the courage To squandering from obligation And as they understand Will it He must have done it Shallately with the soul of that father I am kon心 Not for some reason Nor for any part

Nor for one Come with me üst It would only exceed my life To Laurigia And Seoul And Seoul Like the sun of the sea