Brinton's Mill

An illustrator, muralist, lithographer, and landscape artist, Peter Hurd is often described as a regionalist painter of the American Southwest. A native of New Mexico, Hurd studied at Haverford College and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and, from 1924 to 1929, he studied illustration with N.C. Wyeth. Although he worked in oils under Wyeth, he shifted to working with tempera, a medium which he later introduced to both N.C. and Andrew Wyeth. Hurd lived for a time in Chadds Ford after marrying Henriette Wyeth, but the two moved to New Mexico in the 1930s.

This painting is the later of two versions of Brinton’s Mill, completed two years apart. Here, Hurd is more interested in the mill itself rather than the surrounding landscape. The tone is more somber than the 1928 painting, perhaps showing the area after a rainstorm, alluded to by the dark clouds and cooler tones.