(Man Reading Newspaper)

Katherine Schmidt, (Man Reading Newspaper), 1935, pen and ink and pencil on paper, sheet: 10 ⁷⁄₈ x 8 in. (27.6 x 20.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1976.75

Artwork Details

Title: (Man Reading Newspaper)
Artist: Katherine Schmidt
Date: 1935
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: sheet: 10 ⁷⁄₈ x 8 in. (27.6 x 20.3 cm)
Credit Line: Museum purchase
Mediums Description: pen and ink and pencil on paper
Classifications: Drawing
Subjects: Figure male — full length
Recreation — leisure — reading
Object — written matter — newspaper
Object Number: 1976.75
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1976.75

Artwork Description

For Katherine Schmidt, as she noted in a 1969 interview, "New York means to me freedom and escape. . . . You can be very private here; you can be very sociable here. There's a choice." Schmidt moved to the city with her family as a child and, seizing this freedom, attended her first classes at the Art Students League at age thirteen, despite her parents' disapproval. At the League, she met Peggy Bacon, Isabel Bishop, and Victoria Hutson Huntley, all represented elsewhere in this exhibition. This sketch demonstrates Schmidt's mastery of realistic figure drawing, which she employed in larger paintings to bring awareness to the unjust social conditions in New York and the nation during the Great Depression.