The Sheepherder

In this somber tempera painting, Peter Hurd portrays Don Patricio Trujillo, a shepherd who spent his later years roaming the Hondo Valley in New Mexico and occasionally posing for Hurd. Although he depicted Trujillo in a lithograph as well, only the painting could capture the man’s silvery white beard that so impressed Hurd. Portraying him as a humble shepherd in this portrait, Hurd must have been fascinated by Trujillo’s youth as a cowboy working on the Chisum Ranch south of Roswell in the days of Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War.