Government-Sponsored Paintings (Great Depression)

George Ault
Studio Interior
1938
watercolor on paper
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Douglas Brown
New Orleans - Louis Prima's House
1937
gouache on paper
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Samuel Joseph Brown
Mrs. Simmons
ca. 1936
watercolor on board
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Morris Davidson
Riverfront
ca. 1934
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Julia Eckel
Radio Broadcast
1933-34
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Stuart Edie
Brown Derby
cq.1933-34
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Lily Furedi
Subway
1934
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Charles Louis Goeller
Third Avenue
1934
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Jules Halfant
Dead End
ca. 1939
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

William Karp
Electric Production and Direction
ca. 1933-34
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

"William Karp created Electric Production and Direction as a mural design for the Public Works of Art Project in New York during the 1930s. The image shows disembodied, muscular hands and arms as components in a complex machine. It is difficult to tell who is in control. The hands at the top might be twisting and pulling strings to operate the machine, but the giant eye in the background suggests there is a greater power watching over. Mechanical forms echo the shape of the clenched fist in the center, but the fist is also tightly clamped in place. This sinister combination of flesh and metal evokes a common fear during the 1930s that machines would not only replace factory workers, but would literally absorb them into their clinking, whirring mechanisms."

– curator's notes from the Smithsonian

Reathel Keppen
Still Life, Lincoln Park Conservatory
ca. 1935
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Howard Taft Lorenz
The Poet
ca. 1935
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Rowland Lyon
Georgetown Waterfront
1934
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Jenne Magafan
S.F. Ruins no. 1
ca. 1937
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Hester Miller
Untitled
ca. 1934
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Emily Muir
Orchard Street
ca. 1940
watercolor on paper
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Carl Gustaf Nelson
Central Park
1934
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Harry William Scheuch
Workers on the Cathedral of Learning
1934
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Zoltan Sepeshy
Hauling in the Net
ca. 1940
oil on board
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Millard Sheets
Tenement Flats
ca. 1933-34
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Sterling Smeltzer
CCC Boy, Winter Costume
1936
oil on board
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Kauvar Smith
The Sky Pond
ca. 1933-34
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Winthrop Duthie Turney
Selection from Birds and Animals of the United States
1934
oil on canvas
(study for unexecuted WPA mural)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Nicola Ziroli
Old Pink Mansion
1937
oil on canvas
(WPA project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from Birthday

Amazingly, I can look back

fifty years. And there, at the end of the gaze, 

a human being already entirely recognizable,

the hands clutched in the lap, the eyes

staring into the future with the combined

terror and hopelessness of a soul expecting annihilation.

Entirely familiar, though still, of course, very young.

Staring blindly ahead, the expression of someone staring into utter darkness.

And thinking – which meant, I remember, the attempts of the mind

to prevent change.

                           *                    *             

I remember that age. Riddled with self-doubt, self-loathing,

and at the same time suffused

with contempt for the communal, the ordinary; forever

consigned to solitude, the bleak solace of perception, to a future

completely dominated by the tragic, with no use for the immense will

but to fend it off –

This is the problem of silence:

one cannot test one's ideas.

Because they are not ideas, they are the truth. 

All the defenses, the spiritual rigidity; the insistent

unmasking of the ordinary to reveal the tragic,

were actually innocence of the world.

– Louise Glück (2001)