Fruit and Plant
A half circular table is placed against the wall. On top of the table is a pile of fruits,pairs, apples and lemons, spilling out of a wooden basket that is sideways. To the left of the basket and behind the fruit is a potted plant that appears to be a cactus. There is a clear reflection in the table of the objects on the table creating a shine to the table. There are visible brush strokes on the canvas which indicates that the painter had impressionist influences. About the Artist: The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Copen grew up in Coney Island, NY and worked in the family business. He showed his art at a 1939 WPA show at Federal Extension Gallery, Long Beach, NY with a theme of farms and country life; his watercolor was entitled “Curb Market.” Along with NDG artists Fred Adler and Ben Delman, Copen was chosen for a 1941 exhibit at the USDA’s Surplus Marketing Department, in New York City called “Market Scenes”; his paintings were entitled “Street Scene” and “City Markets.” At his death in 2002, Copen donated 2,700 pieces of African art to Colgate University’s Longyear Museum of Anthropology that he had collected during 1960s-90. 1 more image at FAP.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18140
Federal Art Project
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Ramsay, Elizabeth (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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Still Image
048
A large and elegant boat dominates this scene, immediately drawing the viewer’s attention. Those few people visible in Jacks' print, scattered around the docks, appear almost ghost-like, as if incorporated into the backdrop. Their small number and otherworldly quality give the setting a sense of emptiness, making the composition feel mythical or even ominous. The Angler sits at a dock that is otherwise barren, and it is the only vessel present, further emphasizing the isolation of the scene. Jacks' use of space in her lithograph is particularly interesting, as it highlights the relationship between different elements. Small figures on an empty dock draw attention to the surrounding desolate space, creating a tension between isolation and the expansive landscape. The boat’s overwhelming size compared to the people suggests visual weight, whereas the figures appear vulnerable and hidden in the background, reinforcing the boat’s symbolic importance. The Angler itself floats on what appears to be windy water, with small, calm ripples outlined in sharp black. Overhead, the sky shifts from light to dark, moving from the top left to the right side and guiding the viewer’s gaze across the scene. This shift in tone moves the mood from calm to ominous. About the Artist Mabel Wellington Jack was born in 1899 in New York City. During her early life, she lived in Ohio and traveled frequently with her parents on one of the last showboats to sail down the Mississippi River. She was educated in Midwest private schools, where she received several art scholarships. From roughly 1935 to 1943, she worked as an artist for the New York Art Project and the Federal Art Project (FAP), also creating artworks for the New View Hospital and Home during this time. She was mainly a printmaker who experimented with bold and dramatic nautical themes during the WPA era. Like another of her works from this period, Swan Dive (1935), they can be appreciated as “representative of a new world into which women were propelling themselves” (Adams and Keene 54). During World War II, Jack was involved with the Red Mask Players, a Red Cross Circuit troupe, where she designed scenery and danced in performances, although further details of her roles are not recorded. Jack was married twice during her life, though not much is known about her late husbands; she preferred to use her maiden name publicly. In 1946, she moved from Greenwich Village to Staten Island, NY. There, she became an active member of the South Shore Artist Group, an important art community that showcased both amateur and professional artists through frequent exhibitions and outdoor shows. She regularly exhibited her work at the Staten Island Museum and in various outdoor events, eventually earning the distinction of honorary lifetime member. Before her passing, she lived at Richmondtown Treasure House and later at Annadale Beach. Mabel Wellington Jack passed away at the age of 80 on July 12, 1975. 5 works at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 3 works at the Baltimore Museum of Art. 2 works at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. 1 work at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. 1 work at the Princeton University art Museum. 1 image at FAP. 8 images at GSA. Works Consulted: “Miss Mabel W. Jack, Island Artist,” Staten Island Advance 23 July 1970: 19; Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene, Women, Art, and the New Deal (2015).
New Deal Museum, Mt. Morris NY Object #FA 48
c. 1936
Harrington, Gwenyth
Still image
10 and Out
This painting depicts a boxing match, in which one of the boxers successfully knocks out his opponent. The victor, standing upright on the right side sporting turquoise shorts, looks confident and strong as he watches his opponent on the ground along with the referee. His opponent is curled up on the floor of the ring, his face downturned and covered by his arms. The colors are vibrant, and the work’s shadows create a realistic effect. Braverman's painting takes on new significance when considered in relation to economic conditions during the 1930s. About the Artist: Born in New York City, Braverman’s subsequent life tracks alongside the changing fortunes of radical politics in America. He appears to have lived in Chicago, studying in Paris with André L’hote, but he also was listed as Chairman of the People’s Institute in Toledo, OH during 1911. Perhaps his debut as an artist began in 1907, at age 19, with political cartoons published in To-Morrow Magazine: on subjects like plutocracy and class-based sexual politics. During the 1910s “Barney” was Associate Editor and Circulation Manager for The Progressive Woman in Chicago. It was founded as The Socialist Woman in 1907 by Josephine Conger-Kaneko and in 1913 would become The Coming Nation before folding in 1914. He produced the magazine’s masthead much of its political art: on child labor, domestic work, and women in trade unions. Meanwhile, Braverman also was drawing political cartoons for The Masses (1912) and publishing pamphlets like “Suffragists, Watch Out for the Wolf!” (1913). After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and as socialist unity fragmented under the duress of Palmer Raids and systematic anti-red legislation, Braverman became disillusioned and moved into poster art and advertising. By the 1920s he worked for the Curtis Company agency in Detroit, MI and then in 1926 the Hamman group in Oakland, CA. During his time in Detroit, Braverman played an important role in smuggling copies of James Joyce’s banned novel Ulysses. In 1922, the novelist Ernest Hemingway—who knew Braverman—suggested an arrangement with publisher Sylvia Beach: she would ship 300 books to Windsor, Ontario, where Braverman had rented a room; he would smuggle them across the US border individually, then re-bundle them and ship via a private express company. He asked only to be reimbursed for his expenses (no fee charged) at a time of heavy border patrols during Prohibition. Historian Kevin Birmingham writes that “it required him to break the law every time he crossed the border with a copy of Ulysses, possessed a copy for distribution in Michigan and shipped the book across state lines. He risked a five-thousand-dollar fine and five years in prison, but he would do it anyway” (The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses 236-237). Later Braverman created works for the Federal Art Project, including “Down and Out” (1937)—perhaps modeled on the boxing paintings of George Bellows, like “Dempsey and Firpo” (1924). One critic reviewing a 1936 group show complained that Braverman’s “static figures against his dynamic backgrounds drop his picture to a poster level...he suffers from commercial art influence, with its false emphasis on showiness” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle 9 Feb. 1936: 40). But Braverman’s work always had been grounded in the striking image, and postwar Pop Art soon would incorporate both political and commercial iconography. Braverman always had a great interest in films, during the 1940s working upon an authorized biography of the director D.W. Griffith that never was published. He lived the last years of his life in St. Paul, MN.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18124
1937
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Sheedy, Marianna (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
034
100 Years Pass
A neoclassical mansion, accessorized by ancestral family tree, looms over a woman wearing a long dress at lower left. Upon closer viewing the coherence of this scene breaks down; she's carrying an axe in her left hand, a la Lizzie Borden, along with something in her right hand we cannot see. Moreover, any attempt to inhabit a romantic tableau of the past is undermined by an historical marker on the front lawn--or is it a 1930s highway sign?--along with an airplane flying overhead. About the Artist: Born in Middletown, CT and trained at the Hartford Art School, Guy was among the earliest Americans to see European surrealism via a 1931 show at the Wadsworth Atheneum on the “Newer Super-Realism.” Thereafter he was strongly influenced by painters like Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, and José Clemente Orozco. At the same time, Guy’s work was characterized by a sharp satirical edge that may have owed something to his own work experience—after high school he had tried selling rugs and typewriters; was a sailor and census-taker—and to his political activities, including membership in the radical John Reed Club. In 1930 he helped stage a 1930 labor play entitled Strike; amid unsuccessful attempts to stage it in New York, Guy remained in the city. During the Great Depression Guy was among the leaders of the Unemployed Artists Group (later renamed the Artists Union), which advocated government support for the arts and later resisted proposed cuts to the Federal Arts Program. Guy’s paintings were exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum Annex (1931), the ACA Gallery (1937), American Artists’ Congress (1937), a “Fight War and Fascism” show at the La Salle Gallery (1937), Federal Art Gallery (1938), Boyer Gallery (1939), and Ferargil Galleries (1941). In 1936 he married the respected woodblock artist Clara Skinner, and they co-exhibited at several shows. Guy also undertook public mural projects, referenced only as located in Mexico and “New York churches” (Older). One that is known was a 1934 three-panel project for the Hartford Public High School’s cafeteria on the production of food: “The New England fishing industry is at its center—the port of Gloucester, Mass.—is brought to life in the first panel. The second reveals the story of the wheat belt; fields of grain, elevators, transportation on the Great Lakes. From pastures to stockyard, the cattle industry is recorded in the third” (Older). Perhaps the peak of Guy’s popular recognition, by that time including the epithet of “Yankee Surrealist,” involved a 1941 portfolio of paintings published in Esquire magazine as “Fun in Ghost Town.” “Today he is more or less established,” the profile stated, “if somewhat precariously....James Guy may be called a depression period radical, for there is nothing in his background or conditioning which would make inevitable the questioning of social values that has been going on in his picture making” (Saltpeter). During World War II Guy worked at the Pratt Read glider factory in Deep River, CT where his visual style changed markedly into a futurism he called “industrial symphonies” (Dickinson). After the war he taught art at Bennington College, MacMurray College, and Weslyan University—with a sabbatical of several years during which he wrote and photographed articles on fishing for outdoor magazines (Stedman). 2 works at the National Gallery of Art. 6 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: Ernest Dickinson, “Paints ‘Symphonies of Industry’”, Hartford Courant 15 Oct. 1944: 67; Ilene Susan Fort, “Social Surrealism,” Archives of American Art Journal 22.3 (1982): 8-20; Gerald M. Monroe, “Artists as Militant Trade Union Workers During the Great Depression,” Archives of American Art Journal 14.1 (1974): 7-10; Cy Stedman, “Return of an Artist,” Hartford Courant 19 Jan. 1958: 114-115; Harry Saltpeter, “Guy: Ghoul of the Ghostly West,” Esquire 16.2 (Aug. 1941): 86-87; Julia Older, “Hartford Public Buildings Richly and Lastingly Adorned as Uncle Sam Becomes Nation’s Most Lavish Art Patron,” Hartford Courant 1 Jul. 1934: 59.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18167
1936
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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077
A Painting's Work is Never Done
Promotional poster created for a May 2026 exhibition, added to OpenValley as artwork for the landing page of a five-part exhibit.
New Deal Museum
Theel, Rose
png, 5.6 MB
A Peaceful Valley
Powell depicts a calm, rural landscape, with a flowing stream that starts in the foreground and curves across the canvas. The colors of the work become hazier, and brushstrokes become more organic as the eye moves from the foreground to the background, utilizing the technique of atmospheric perspective. The waters appear still, with bits of rock and greenery peeking out from the surface, providing more visual interest to the foreground. On the left side of the canvas, closer to the middle ground, there is a patch of land with foliage and a cluster of trees. consisting mostly of green, with bits of warmer colors dispersed throughout the bushes. The trunks and limbs of the trees are dark, creating a contrast against the soft green of the leaves. On the right side of the painting, another patch of land sits. There is less contrast in this area, as it is approaching closer to the background. On this side, we can see the figure of what appears to be a farmer and a goat-driven wagon. Due to the loose strokes used to create these figures, they almost seem to blend into the surrounding landscape. The painting embodies its title, as while it depicts a scene that can be interpreted as a farmer doing his job, it is simultaneously calm and serene. It reflects Powell’s later life, when he would be creating works for the WPA. He was older, and instead of traveling and doing grander things as he had in his younger years, he had more or less settled down. The farmer in the background may represent Powell himself, as while he is still working, the life he lives is much calmer than it may have been in the past, and this difference in style between this painting and some of his older works further shows this. About the Artist Powell was an American painter and muralist known primarily for his atmospheric landscape paintings. Born in Van Wert County, Ohio, he developed an early interest in art and eventually pursued formal training. Over the course of his career, he became associated with American landscape painting, particularly the natural scenery of the northeastern United States. His career spanned from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, meaning he was quite far along in his art career when he began creating works under the Federal Art Program. Powell studied at several notable art institutions, including the San Francisco School of Design, the St. Louis School of Fine Art, and the Académie Julian in Paris. This combination of American and European education exposed him to a variety of artistic traditions and techniques, which influenced his approach to painting. His works often featured carefully observed natural environments such as forests, mountains, streams, and farmland, of which he based on places he’s been. Earlier in his career, he tended to paint grand landscapes of the West. He made paintings of National Parks, such as his work “Going to Sun Mountain, Glacier Park” and “Lincoln Peak, Glacier National Park.” In addition, he also made works encapsulating the expanse of the Grand Canyon. His career in his later years consisted of him painting more calm, rural landscapes, as he wasn’t traveling as much. His art was praised, particularly for how he composed the subjects of his work and his usage of color. Throughout his career, Powell lived and worked in both New York City and Dover Plains, New York. In addition to creating easel paintings, he also produced murals for public and religious buildings. Some of these murals were installed in churches in New York as well as in Bowne Hospital in Poughkeepsie, which was a sanatorium much like the New Deal Museum on Mt. Morris. Powell was active in the American art community and belonged to several professional organizations. He was elected an academician of the National Academy of Design in 1921 and remained associated with the institution for the rest of his life. He was also a member of the Salmagundi Club, the New York Watercolor Club, and was a founder of Allied Artists of America. During his career, he exhibited widely and received multiple awards for his work. Powell continued painting well into his late years and died on July 15th, 1956, in Poughkeepsie, New York. Today, his paintings of scenic landscapes remain part of museum collections and art auctions, preserving his contribution to American landscape painting.
New Deal Museum, Mount Morris NY Object #FA 231
Papapietro, Isabella (description and biography) Helquist, Morgan (photography)
American Farm
This striking landscape is organized around the single arc of a highway that divides the space into two sectors: above, a brightly lit realm of forests and mountain ridges; below, a shadowed landscape of brown fields, a diseased tree, and a dilapidated farm house. Clearly, the travails of American farmers during the 1930s has influenced Mira’s subject matter. The highway itself is a pristine band of white futurity, guarded on one side by rails and on the other by electric or phone lines (which the farm conspicuously lacks). Improbably, we see three cars on the road along with two people walking alongside; what may be a farmer watches them walk away. About the Artist: Born in Italy, Mira immigrated to the US in 1904. He attended the Art Students League, the Beaux Arts School, and the National Academy of Design, where he studied with Ivan Olinsky; his works were exhibited at several Corcoran Museum biennials. As a young man of twenty-two, Mira and a fellow artist named Joseph Perna planned to hitchhike across the United States, painting pictures as they went. They paused in Gettysburg, PA, to paint several battlefield landscapes (Gettysburg Times 10 June 1922: 2), and then Mira was invited by one driver to paint a portrait of his parents in Detroit. “After a few months,” Mira recollected, “I became so absorbed in my work that I had completely forgotten about California. By this time my companion had become homesick and he induced me to return with him.” Returning to New York, Mira was best known for his cityscapes of lower Manhattan and capturing “the way busy people see it...None of those breath-taking shots cameramen contrive of towers and infinity, which no New Yorker sees in actuality” (Los Angeles Times 31 Jan. 1943: 35). 18 more images at The Athenaeum. 2 more images at FAP.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18208
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115
American Wood Cock
A pair of woodcocks is pictured somewhat outside of their preferred grassy habitat, beside a cozy opening in a tree trunk. Although they often are associated with spring, the presence of freshly fallen leaves seems to indicate a moment just prior to their migration away from this scene. Hand-written at the bottom of the watercolor are Nakamizo’s poetic words: “A game bird that is not distrubed by the agriculture. Bird would come silently some April night, and from it then would disappear some October.” About the Artist: Born in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, Nakamizo—whose name sometimes was spelled “Fugi”—immigrated to the US in 1907, living in Grand Rapids, MI and working as a decorator. He later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League with Frank DuMond and Joseph Pennell. During the early 1920s, he appears to have created an etching of the medical researcher Dr. Hideyo Noguchi that hung in the Nippon Club, New York (Piper). By the 1930s he was fairly well known, especially for his etchings of birds, and exhibited at places like the League Gallery (1933), Montross Gallery (1934), the Brooklyn Museum (1935), the Art Institute of Chicago (1935); and the Carl Fischer Gallery (1936). In 1936 he contributed photographs and illustrations to feminist author Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto’s East Way, West Way: A Modern Japanese Girlhood. In 1943, Nakamizo’s etching “Emblem of Strength and Courage” was chosen for a national exhibition sponsored by the group Artists for Victory; this lithograph of an American eagle surrounded by warplanes may have been ironic, since he was confined at a Japanese internment camp during World War II. 2 works at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 3 works at Lowe Art Museum. 6 works at Queens Library. 1 work at the National Gallery of Art. 6 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: Jean Piper, “Scientist Acts Like Human Dynamo,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle 6 Mar. 1927: 85; Ellen G. Landau, Artists for Victory: An Exhibition Catalog (Library of Congress, 1983).
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18219
126
Anemones
A table, whose covering appears to have been warped, becomes the space for an arrangement of anemones in a copper vase suspended by a thin spiraled black steel stand. An ashtray accompanies the flowers on the table, standing in the foreground. Cool blues and greens are incorporated on the ashtray, and deep purple, reds, and greens predominate in the flowers. An excess amount of leaves, uncommon for anemones, are included in the bouquet, spiraling down the vase and onto the ashtray. The structured, stable and neutral background space, combined with the possibly unstable vase and table, juxtaposes the stability of the space and time period as a whole. About the Artist: We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. Please contact us if you’re able to help. 2 works, as Bertha Stefano, for the Index of American Design.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Counsel on the Arts Object #FA18275
Ritz, Abigail (photographer) Caldwell, Julia (biography)
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182
Apples
We look upon a remarkably minimalist still life--sixteen apples upon a wooden board or table--but by the time of Adler's painting they were highly charged objects due to the thousands of minimally employed apple vendors on New York streets during the Great Depression. Keeping this in mind, we see an insistence upon each apple being represented individually, and for that matter each row of wood laminated into the wooden board. Adler's light and colors are direct, with very little shadow. About the Artist: Born in New York, Adler was the son of Russian immigrants—his father a dressmaker and eventual NDG artist Joseph Adler. Fred studied two years at National Academy of Design, then two more at the Art Students League with Raphael Soyer. At age twenty he was employed by the Federal Art Project and assigned to a Civilian Conservation Corps project in Milford, IA where he “sketch[ed] characteristic moments in camp life” (Milford Mail 6 Sept 1934: 2). In 1940 his “Still Life With Herring” was selected for a Musuem of Modern Art traveling exhibition called “35 Under 35.” Along with NDG artists Herman Copen and Ben Delman, Adler’s painting “Avenue C market” was included in a 1941 show focused upon “Market Scenes,” and held at the USDA’s Surplus Marketing Department in New York. 1 painting at Smithsonian Museum of American Art. 8 more images at FAP.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18099
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