Artist Henriette Wyeth Dies At Age 89 From Artistic Family, She Gained Renown For Her Portraiture

Henriette Wyeth, daughter of American master N.C. Wyeth and a world-renowned painter in her own right, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. She was 89.

As the eldest of five Wyeth children, she was a child prodigy, gaining fame for her portraiture when younger brother Andrew was just beginning to draw.

She moved to New Mexico in 1929 with her husband, artist Peter Hurd, and raised an artistic family of her own - all the while keeping up with her painting, including portraits of actresses Helen Hayes and Paulette Goddard, former first lady Pat Nixon and her own family.

“This brave little lady came out here to nothing from the lush green of Chadds Ford, Pa., and from (Eastern) society, her friends. She came to love this country,” said her son Michael Hurd. “She turned it into something magical for everybody.”

The couple had three children, Peter Hurd Jr., Michael Hurd and Carol Rogers, the latter two becoming artists. Her husband died in 1984.

Born Oct. 22, 1907, in Wilmington, Del., Henriette Wyeth began her art as a child. She started formal art lessons when she was 11, mostly charcoal studies of spheres and pyramids as skewed by shadows and light.

Polio contracted when she was 3 left her with a gnarled right hand, so she drew with her left hand and painted with her right.

She decided at about age 12 to pursue art seriously, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and began to earn renown as a portraitist by age 16.

Her move to New Mexico was made against her father’s wishes.

“He felt I should not let marriage interfere with my painting,” she said in a 1989 interview with The Associated Press.

But she continued to paint until health problems forced a halt a few years ago, her son said. Besides portraits, there were still lifes, floral landscapes and her ethereal “Death and the Child.”

She was an outspoken critic of television and feminism and said that children had been “blunted” by modern society. She stopped doing children’s portraits, she said, “because today’s children - they are so deadpan.”

Of feminists, she said: “I think they are absolutely on the wrong track. I think they are throwing everything worthwhile in a woman’s life out.”

Mothers, she said, should “read to their children, forget the slim hips, be happy. The more a woman gives to people and the busier she is, the far happier she is.”

The same could be said of men, she said, “except I think it’s even more important for a woman. We have a marvelous warmth and intuitive understanding, adaptability and sense of humor.”