Richard F. Hurd

[Lithographed Portfolio of Sketches] Troop K 101st Cavalry: Pyrites, New York, July 15-August 4 [1940]

Dobbs Ferry: Robert F. Hurd / Polygraphic Company of America, 1940. Very Good. Item #6524

Dobbs Ferry: Robert F. Hurd / Polygraphic Company of America, 1940. First Edition. Quarto; 16 leaves, printed recto only. Total of 58 lithographed vignettes. Stiff blue card covers, with additional separate plastic protective outer covers, all in comb binding. Marigold central label on front panel, with lithographed vignette. [No other copies found in WorldCat or elsewhere.]

Covers—both cardstock and plastic—lightly tanned at edges. Chip of about 2.5cm missing from rear plastic outer edge. Normal erosions to cardstock cover outer corners. Minimal tanning to offwhite leaves at outer edges and at comb. Hurd's personal label on front pastedown.

Hurd's series of vignettes tell the story of greenhorn recruits to the 101st Cavalry in upstate New York, as the army wrangles them and they learn to wrangle horses. A graphic novel avant la lettre. Hurd—about whom little is discoverable—deftly captures equine motion and human expression in ways that can be at once caricatural (for the guys) and realist (for the horses). A fraternal documentary—of images made on the fly, then preserved in lithograph—of the last years of horse-powered soldiering, when future horsemen took the Lexingon Avenue subway to get to the stable, and trotted their mounts beside jeeps with the newly formed Air Force approaching overhead.

Price: $75.00