Old Prospector

This model appears in one of Peter Hurd’s lithographs entitled Sheepherder. In the notes for the print, Hurd recalls that the model is a man he met on Main Street in Roswell, New Mexico. Though Hurd could not recollect the man’s name, he complimented the man’s patience in modeling and found it curious that the man was not interested in the least in Hurd’s finished work. In the tempera painting, the man is transformed into a prospector, someone in search of instant wealth, which implies a different lifestyle than the shepherd tending his flock in the print.