10/22/2026
Born on this day in 1907 in Wilmington, DE, Henriette Wyeth Hurd was an American artist best known for her portraits and still life paintings that combined elements of realism and abstraction.
The eldest daughter of illustrator and painter N.C. Wyeth, she began studying painting at home with her father at the age of 11. At 13, she enrolled in the Normal Arts School in Boston, and transferred to the Boston Museum of Art Academy the next year. Two years later, she moved to Philadelphia to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. By the age of 16, she was a well-known portraitist in the area and received many commissions.
Wyeth married Peter Hurd, her father’s apprentice and a fellow student at the Pennsylvania Academy, at the age of 21; the couple had three children together. In the mid-1930s, they moved to San Patricio, New Mexico, settling on a farm of 40 acres. By 1939, they established the Sentinel Ranch, gradually acquiring 2,200 acres. The original ranch, which sits on their original 40 acres (known as the Peter and Henriette Wyeth Hurd House), was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.
🎨: Henriette Wyeth (1907 - 1997), Autumn Flowers, ca. 1926, oil on canvas. © artist, artist's estate, or other rights holders. collections.brandywine.org
