Venus Comb

Like all of her artist family members, Henriette Wyeth engaged in still-life painting throughout her life. In this particularly delicate work, executed well into her career, she depicts three natural objects: a whelk shell at left, a Venus comb murex shell at center, and a snowdrop flower at right. By 1973, when this work was painted, Wyeth and her husband Peter Hurd had moved to New Mexico, far from the rest of her family in Pennsylvania and Maine. Just as Wyeth herself was, all three of the objects depicted are far from their native homes—strangers to the desert landscape of the American Southwest.