Description
Earle Richardson chose to depict fellow African Americans working barefoot in a southern cotton field. These workers are not bent over to pick cotton; the monumental figures stand with a quiet pride that transcends their identity as manual laborers. Their forms take up the foreground, confronting the viewers as equals.The Public Works of Art Project, a pilot program that provided support for art during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term in office, welcomed Richardson and other African American artists, who they hoped would paint "Negro themes," yet only about ten such artists were among the thousands employed for the PWAP. Richardson, a native New Yorker, set his painting in the South to make a statement about his race. Richardson and fellow artist Malvin Gray Johnson planned to say more about the history and promise of black people in a mural series called Negro Achievement, intended to be installed in the New York Public Library's 135th Street Branch (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture), but neither young man lived long enough to complete the project.
Image
Oil On Canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor
