By 1894, 23 more states adopted the holiday, and by June of that year Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September a legal holiday. Like everything else in politics, there were contradictions. Right after President Grover Cleveland used Federal Troops to crush the violent Pullman railway strike, he signed the 1894 act!
Already in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists began to pay attention to hard work in their creations, and art contributes to changes in society’s thinking. As factories proliferated and the union movement progressed, American Realist painters began to depict grueling and dangerous work conditions.
Even though painters abroad had been depicting peasants for quite some time, in the United States artists were painting pictures of the wealthy elites, tradesmen, and military events since that was the market. Members of the servant class might be included to show the wealth or civic standing of the sitter, but scenes of active toil only came to the fore in the 19th century.
Here we have Thomas Mifflin. He is a successful merchant and starting out as a politician. His wife Sarah is demonstrating her domestic industriousness by weaving a decorative fringe. The portrait is by John Singleton Copley, painted in 1773.
With the First Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), work was increasingly done in factories with machines, like the mechanical power loom. Artists were paying more attention to workers who could not afford the benefits and conveniences offered by progress. Still seen as a proud individual in this painting by John B. Neagle in 1829. It is still a true portrait, and the subject’s name is known: Pat Lyon. He and his work are presented as noble.
With the second industrial revolution (1870-1914), mass production became possible. American artists focused on how grueling work had become, as in the workman’s short break illustrated in The Ironworker's Noontime by Thomas Pollock Anschutz (1880) in the De Young Museum.
In 1920, famed photographer Lewis Hine took this photo, Power House Mechanic Working on a Steam Pump. It is obviously carefully posed to convey the nobility of hard work.
Unemployment rose to an unprecedented 20% during the continuing Depression that followed the crash of 1929. President Franklyn D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935 to create jobs where there were none to be had. One of many artists who were looking for work, Martha Levy, received a WPA commission for a mural in a public building. She did one called Men Working in Slate Quarry (1939). Granville was a major slate-producing region along the New York/Vermont border. The mural was created for the local High School and is now displayed at the Slate Valley Museum in Granville, New York.
People at work fell out of fashion as a subject with the art movements of the late 20th and 21st centuries, but earlier depictions remind us of the reason for today’s national holiday.
Already in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists began to pay attention to hard work in their creations, and art contributes to changes in society’s thinking. As factories proliferated and the union movement progressed, American Realist painters began to depict grueling and dangerous work conditions.
Even though painters abroad had been depicting peasants for quite some time, in the United States artists were painting pictures of the wealthy elites, tradesmen, and military events since that was the market. Members of the servant class might be included to show the wealth or civic standing of the sitter, but scenes of active toil only came to the fore in the 19th century.
Here we have Thomas Mifflin. He is a successful merchant and starting out as a politician. His wife Sarah is demonstrating her domestic industriousness by weaving a decorative fringe. The portrait is by John Singleton Copley, painted in 1773.
With the second industrial revolution (1870-1914), mass production became possible. American artists focused on how grueling work had become, as in the workman’s short break illustrated in The Ironworker's Noontime by Thomas Pollock Anschutz (1880) in the De Young Museum.
People at work fell out of fashion as a subject with the art movements of the late 20th and 21st centuries, but earlier depictions remind us of the reason for today’s national holiday.
No comments:
Post a Comment