Millard Sheets: Tenement Flats, 1934
Tenement Flats, 1934
Millard Sheets, Born: Pomona, California 1907 Died: Gualala, California 1989
oil on canvas 40 1/4 x 50 1/4 in. (102.1 x 127.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service 1965.18.48
These ramshackle tenements were home to poor families in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles during the Great Depression. The artist failed to show that just to the left of this view a cable car line called Angels Flight offered a ride up the steep hill. In the painting a lone figure trudges up steps toward once elegant Victorian mansions that had degenerated into boardinghouses. Millard Sheets, an up-and-coming young California artist, enjoyed drawing and painting the people and houses of this colorful neighborhood. Here he shows women who have finished washing and hanging out their laundry in the days before electric appliances lightened these chores. Now the women stop to gossip while leaning on stair rails, or sit in the shade to avoid the hot afternoon sun.
Sheets, like many artist members of regional committees, proudly gave his painting as a gift to his country. The shabbily dressed women in Tenement Flats would be startled to discover that this painting would hang in the elegant surroundings of the White House. PWAP paintings like this one were displayed in reception areas to show President Roosevelt’s commitment to art and to ordinary Americans across the country.
Personal, educational and non-commercial use of digital images from the American Art Museum's collection is permitted, with attribution to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, for all images unless otherwise noted. http://americanart.si.edu/collections/rights/
Millard Sheets: Tenement Flats, 1934
Tenement Flats, 1934
Millard Sheets, Born: Pomona, California 1907 Died: Gualala, California 1989
oil on canvas 40 1/4 x 50 1/4 in. (102.1 x 127.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service 1965.18.48
These ramshackle tenements were home to poor families in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles during the Great Depression. The artist failed to show that just to the left of this view a cable car line called Angels Flight offered a ride up the steep hill. In the painting a lone figure trudges up steps toward once elegant Victorian mansions that had degenerated into boardinghouses. Millard Sheets, an up-and-coming young California artist, enjoyed drawing and painting the people and houses of this colorful neighborhood. Here he shows women who have finished washing and hanging out their laundry in the days before electric appliances lightened these chores. Now the women stop to gossip while leaning on stair rails, or sit in the shade to avoid the hot afternoon sun.
Sheets, like many artist members of regional committees, proudly gave his painting as a gift to his country. The shabbily dressed women in Tenement Flats would be startled to discover that this painting would hang in the elegant surroundings of the White House. PWAP paintings like this one were displayed in reception areas to show President Roosevelt’s commitment to art and to ordinary Americans across the country.
Personal, educational and non-commercial use of digital images from the American Art Museum's collection is permitted, with attribution to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, for all images unless otherwise noted. http://americanart.si.edu/collections/rights/