Peter Hurd was born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1904. He travelled to the East Coast to attend West Point Academy in 1921 but chose to pursue a career in art under the tutelage of N.C. Wyeth two years later. He studied with the nationally famous muralist and illustrator for the next ten years and then returned to New Mexico where his true artistic style was to develop. The artists well-loved depictions of the American southwest rendered in egg tempera, watercolor and lithography hang in the Pentagon, the US Postal Service and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery among others.