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The Rainy Season
Accession # 45.135
Artist Peter Hurd
Title The Rainy Season
Date 1940
Medium Egg tempera on masonite
Dimensions 34 1/2 x 47 1/4 in. (87.6 x 120 cm)
Inscriptions Inscribed verso top: "The Rainy Season / Painted in Egg Tempera / by Peter Hurd / AUGUST 1940 / AT Sentinel Ranch, San Patricio / N. Mex."
Signed Signed lower right: "Peter Hurd"
Credit Line Gift of Roy R. Neuberger
Location Visible Storage: Case 15, Screen J (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks: Born in remote Roswell, New Mexico, Peter Hurd established his home at Sentinel Ranch, in nearby San Patricio, by 1940 and devoted himself to painting the area’s distinctive landscape. Hurd had been experimenting with the medium seen here—egg tempera (an egg-based, water-soluble paint mixture) applied to gesso-coated panels—since the early 1930s. Derived from Italian Renaissance practice, the method allowed him to achieve a brilliancy of color and “flatness” that he believed were otherwise attainable only with watercolors.