Physical Qualities
Color crayon and brush and tusche lithograph, Sheet: 292 x 404 mm. (11 1/2 x 15 7/8 in.)
Image: 243 x 335 mm. (9 9/16 x 13 3/16 in.)
Credit Line
The United States General Services Administration, formerly Federal Works Agency, Works Progress Administration, on extended loan to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Object Number
L.1943.9.487
Pauline Vinson foregrounded landscape painter and printmaker Chee Chin S. Cheung Lee (1896–1966) in this view of a WPA workshop, challenging racist and antiimmigrant
assumptions about who counts as an American artist. Born in Guangdong Province, China, Lee was banned from obtaining U.S. citizenship by a long history of laws— beginning in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act—designed to restrict immigration from Asia.
Minnetta Good and Ruth Chaney also used the longstanding subject of the artist’s studio to valorize the creative work of women, who were often marginalized in the art world.
Good’s self-portrait Artist at Work shows the artist painting along to her record player, surrounded by the tools of her trade. Chaney’s writer waits somberly for inspiration with pen poised.
Virginia Anderson and Robin Owen Joyce, The Baltimore Museum of Art, "Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA," November 5, 2023 - June 30, 2024.
Inscribed: RECTO: LL margin (stamped in black ink): 'FEDERAL ART PROJECT / NYC WPA'; LC margin (pencil): 'The Writer'; LR margin (pencil): 'Ruth Chaney'; BR Corner (pencil): '14'; on stone, LR: 'Chaney'. VERSO: LR (pencil): '#1696 - gr. I'; C: BMA stamp.
