Artists of The New Deal
Capturing the American Experience
Swann Galleries kicked off its winter season with a bang on Jan. 25, setting six world auction records by artists of the Works Progress Administration.
More than 200 works were offered in Swann’s fourth annual sale devoted to artists of the WPA, an American New Deal agency that employed millions to do public works projects, including constructing public buildings and roads. Many artists honed their craft while employed in New Deal programs, resulting in the auction’s wide range of objects, including dioramas, mural studies, paintings, photographs, posters, prints and work program signage.
The American artists who participated in the New Deal art programs not only benefited financially from the government funding but also emerged as seasoned experts of their craft, and the Post-War era of art blossomed in America.
Works soaring way above estimates and setting records included James Russell Sherman’s pair of Mural studies for the Marion, Iowa, Post Office, one tempera on board, one pencil on paper, that sold for $15,000 (estimate: $2,500-$3,500); Isaac Friedlander’s
Our Daily Bread etching, 1935, $15,000 (estimate: $1,500-$2,500); Joseph de Martini’s Six Day Bicycle Race, Madison Square Garden, oil on board, circa 1941, $12,500 (estimate: $1,000-$1,500); George Rodgers Barber with a circa 1938 painting created for a WPA mural competition, $7,000 (estimate: $1,000-$1,500); Henry Gottlieb’s Steel Town Panorama, color screenprint, 1941, $8,750 (estimate: $1,500-$2,500); and Leon Gilmer’s Cement Finishers, wood engraving, 1939, $3,500 (estimate: $1,000-$1,500).
Though it didn’t set a record, the auction’s top lot was Claude Clark’s Drafting, oil on board, circa 1940-41, that sold for $17,500. This striking modernist painting and scarce image of a Black architect or architectural student is an excellent example of the early oil paintings of Clark.
Photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange’s connection to her subjects is inherent, and she was a master of capturing moving and thought-provoking compositions. The second highest-selling lot was Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, a 1990s variant of her Migrant Mother, 1936, which is an alternative look at one of the most recognizable images from the Great Depression. It sold for $16,250, more than five times its high estimate of $3,000.
Other highlights included Palmer Hayden’s On the Jersey Side, oil on canvas, circa late 1930s, that sold for $15,000; and Raphael Soyer’s Untitled (Portrait of a Student), oil on canvas, circa 1930 that fetched $8,125, smashing its estimate of $800-$1,200.
The WPA not only established a great legacy, but a greater generation of artists whose works defined the American spirit. Capturing vernacular architecture to the rise of the modern city, the elevation of visual and performing arts, interior scenes of domestic laborers to pool halls allowed artists to paint, print, and photograph scenes of American life during a period of great strife to forge forward. They helped form a modern American identity, capturing American life in all its hardships, pride and tenacity.
Collectors and dealers value the significance of WPA art and have been buying, selling and trading it for decades.
For more results, visit swanngalleries.com. Photos courtesy Swann Auction Galleries.