Robert A. Birmelin

The Burning Tower

Henriette Wyeth-Hurd Hand signed, Collotype, Limited Edition of 490 Image Size: 20" x 26" framed 28.5 X 34.5 Provenance: printed at Triton Press and has their certificate of authenticity verso. Henriette Wyeth Hurd (1907 – 1997) was an American artist noted for her portraits and still life paintings. The eldest daughter of illustrator N.C. Wyeth, she studied painting with her father and brother Andrew Wyeth at their home and studio in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Henrietta Wyeth was born in Wilmington, Delaware, into an artistic family. Wyeth was the eldest of the five children of noted illustrator N.C. Wyeth and his wife Carolyn Bockius. Her siblings Carolyn and Andrew also became artists, and all three studied with their father. Andrew Wyeth became the most well-known artist of this family. Henriette contracted polio at age 3, which altered her health and use of her right hand. As a result, she learned to draw with her left hand and paint with her right. She grew up on the family farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and attended local Quaker schools. She and her siblings were eventually homeschooled because their father distrusted the public school system. She began formal art lessons with her father at age 11, making charcoal studies and geometric shapes. A child prodigy, at age 13 Wyeth was enrolled in the Normal Arts School in Boston, Massachusetts. The next year, in 1921, she entered the Boston Museum of Art Academy. Two years later she moved to Philadelphia to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. By age 16, she was well known as a portraitist and received commissions for paintings of Wilmington residents. Deeply influenced by her father's unique realistic style, she rejected early 20th-century painting styles such as Impressionism and Cubism. She was also socially and politically conservative. As a result, later in life she rejected the progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s, including the women's movement. She often criticized television and modern culture. At age 21, in 1929 Wyeth married artist Peter Hurd, a fellow student at the Pennsylvania Academy and her father's apprentice. The couple had three children together: Peter Jr., Carolyn, and Michael Hurd...

Participation in salons: Grand Prix International de Peinture, Cannes, France 1958 Jeune peinture, Paris, France 1960-65 Grands et jeunes d'aujourd'hui, France 1960-85 des Beaux...