Road Dust

This sunset scene illustrates one of the primary limitations of lithography as Peter Hurd practiced it—color. In a note Hurd tucked behind the print of The Water Tank (also in this exhibition), he describes the "saffron afterglow beyond the mountains," which is vividly captured in this tempera. The pick-up truck speeding along a dusty deserted road also appears in the lithograph Home for Supper, which was made over thirty years after this painting.