The Sheep Herder
Peter Hurd, American, 1904 - 1984
1937
Lithograph on paper
250
Image: 10 13/16 × 9 5/16 in. (27.5 × 23.7 cm)
Sheet: 15 1/16 × 13 in. (38.2 × 33 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Desky
PR.984.13.1
Publisher
Associated American Artists, New York
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Research Area
Not on view
Inscriptions
Inscribed, in graphite, lower left margin: Sheepherder; signed, in graphite, lower right margin: Peter Hurd; signed, lower left, within stone: PETER HURD (underscored).
Label
Like many American artists active during the 1930s and early 1940s, Kansas-born John Steuart Curry largely rejected modernist abstraction, preferring instead to reach a broad audience via murals and prints of everyday life. The Plainsman portrays one of the social “types” associated with the West—a rugged white settler of the Great Plains. Here he adopts a heroic stance after having shot a bison—a species key to Native American lifeways. His buckskin outfit represents a style originally developed by Native Americans that trappers and plainsmen adopted, as often portrayed in Western movies. Fittingly, Curry borrowed this figure’s costume from a Hollywood studio.
From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art
Course History
ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022
GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022
ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022
ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022
ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022
ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022
ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022
SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022
Exhibition History
Looking for America: Prints of Rural Life from the 1930's and 1940's" Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 3, 1994-March 5, 1995.
This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 12 - July 22, 2022.
Publication History
Barbara J. MacAdam, Looking for America: Prints of Rural Life from the 1930s and 1940s, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1994, listed no. 33, ill. fig. 6.
Provenance
Robert M. and Joan M. Desky, San Mateo, California; given to present collection, 1984.
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