American painter Mabel Dwight(American, 1935)- lithograph of skeleton leading parade of well helled men in suites & top hats. Work reflects public condemnation of those who made money from producing WWI munitions.

Merchants of Death- Mabel Dwight, 1935 (American)

"I was both with a hatred for the duality of poverty and riches." (artist)

History repeats.

BTW- Dwight had #disability- she was born deaf.
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This small panel is a study for French artist Georges Pierre Seurat's “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” his monumental painting--roughly 6 x 10 feet in size--now in the Art Institute of Chicago. Seurat made extensive preliminary drawings and oil studies for many of his larger paintings, a practice he had learned while studying at the traditional Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte” is painted in his pointillist style, characterized by small dots of pure color. However, this study, which may have been executed directly in front of the scene, was painted in a looser, more spontaneous manner. La Grande Jatte is an island on the Seine near Neuilly, a suburb of Paris; during Seurat's time it was a fashionable leisure site for picnicking, walking, and boating, as his large painting reveals. This study depicts a stylishly-dressed woman with a parasol walking a pet monkey on a leash. Monkeys were not common pets in Seurat's day, and some critics concluded that the monkey, a traditional symbol of lust, indicated that this woman was a prostitute. However, her dress suggests she is a typical middle-class stroller, and the meaning of the monkey remains ambiguous. In the final painting she is accompanied by a well-dressed man. It is one of nearly sixty studies Seurat created for his best-known painting. The fashionably dressed woman took on nearly life-size proportions in the final, monumental painting, where she joined over forty middle-class figures relaxing in a park outside Paris. In the study, Seurat’s short green and yellow brushstrokes create areas of sunlit and shaded grass. The sketch displays his method of creating form through contrasts and gradation of color. Seurat’s La Grande Jatte is considered an icon of Neo-Impressionism, a movement that applied optical theories and science to Impressionism’s experiments with light and color.

Woman with a Monkey (study for "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte") by Georges Pierre Seurat (French) - Oil on wood panel / 1884 - Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, Massachusetts) #womeninart #art #Seurat #womensart #SmithCollege #GeorgesSeurat #SmithCollegeMuseumofArt

American artist Alfred Kappes makes an old woman ask a dreary question in his " Is this Life worth Living?" … and we are half inclined to say “No…” at the depiction of an exhausted elderly impoverished woman with weathered skin sitting on a stone floor near a bucket of coal, holding a coal rake in her hand, wearing a dirty white apron, old leather boots, long gray socks, dark brown dress, red shawl, and old cap. Her expression conveys weariness (or perhaps bitter resignation) while her slumped posture suggests quiet desperation. Tones of browns, grays, and muted creams convey a sense of atmosphere as shadowed lighting contributes to the mood of hardship, reflecting the struggles of poverty. The artist's attention to detail creates a strong sense of authenticity and realism, connecting us with the unidentified woman's struggles. Kappes was born in New York city in 1850. He studied art without a teacher, was a member of the American Watercolor Society, and in May, 1894, was elected a National Academician. He was a constant exhibitor at the National Academy of Design, and in 1880 received the Hallgarten prize from that institution. His works, chiefly genre paintings before he passed away in Yonkers, N. Y., June 17, 1894 at the age of 44.

“Is This Life Worth Living?” by Alfred Kappes (American) - Oil on canvas / 1882 - Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, Massachusetts) #womeninart #art #artwork #womensart #oilpainting #AlfredKappes #Kappes #fineart #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist #oldage #realism #bskyart #SmithCollegeMuseumofArt

Tattered and Torn (1886) by American artist Alfred Kappes depicts an African American woman dressed in rags, holding a lit match in her extended hand, so decrepit she can barely light her pipe. Unlike other artists of the period who sentimentalized African American subjects, Kappes painted with frankness and sensitivity the reality of his subjects’ poverty while showing us what the underside of the Gilded Age looked like. With poignant and beautifully executed realism, a sparsely furnished room is presented with an alcove at back left and small shaded window at back right of center where two figures sit in shadow near a window. The older African American woman stands, in a suspended moment before lighting a pipe, in front center under direct light head wrapped in white cloth, eyes closed, both arms up, match in one hand and pipe in the other, dressed in very tattered and patched light colored dress, torn faded red jacket and boots. The mature woman looks utterly exhausted, but dominates the canvas. Despite her exhaustion, she is concentrating carefully on lighting this match to light her pipe as though it were one small pleasure in life. The same female model appears in Kappes’s “Rent Day” (1885), a painting of a landlord collecting rent from a black couple. “Tattered and Torn” and “Rent Day,” which the artist may have intended as companion pieces, were both shown at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Known primarily for his genre scenes depicting blacks, Kappes was the son of a German carpenter. He won the National Academy of Design's First Hallgarten Prize in 1887 for the painting “Buckwheat Cakes.” Although he was later disqualified for being over the age of 35, the award resulted in his election as an Associate member. A similar favorable reaction to his 1894 entry “Voudoo led to his election as an Academician, but he died that year (at the age of 44) before receiving this status.

“Tattered and Torn” by Alfred Kappes (American) - Oil on canvas / 1886 - Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, Massachusetts) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #AlfredKappes #Kappes #AmericanArt #artwork #fineart #AmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArt #Realism #poverty #history
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@smithartmuseum SCMA wishes everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

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Paul Landacre. American (1893–1963). “Some Ingredients,” 1953–1954. Wood engraving on medium weight, moderately textured, white paper.

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“On Menemsha Pond.” Thomas Hart Benton (American; 1889–1975). Gouache and acrylic on paper, 1971. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts.

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“Beach Scene.” Samuel S. Carr (American, born England; 1837–1908). Oil on canvas, 1879. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts.

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