Tenement Flats

Millard Sheets, Tenement Flats, 1933-1934, oil on canvas, 40 ¹⁄₄ x 50 ¹⁄₄ in. (102.1 x 127.6 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1965.18.48

Artwork Details

Title: Tenement Flats
Artist: Millard Sheets
Date: 1933-1934
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum
/
1st Floor
/
South Wing
Dimensions: 40 ¹⁄₄ x 50 ¹⁄₄ in. (102.1 x 127.6 cm.)
Credit Line: Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Architecture Exterior — domestic — apartment
New Deal — Public Works of Art Project — California
Figure group — female and child
Animal — cat
Occupation — domestic — laundry
Recreation — leisure — conversation
Object Number: 1965.18.48
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1965.18.48

Artwork Description

These ramshackle tenements were home to poor families in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles during the Great Depression. The artist failed to show that just to the left of this view a cable car line called Angels Flight offered a ride up the steep hill. In the painting a lone figure trudges up steps toward once elegant Victorian mansions that had degenerated into boardinghouses. Millard Sheets, an up-and-coming young California artist, enjoyed drawing and painting the people and houses of this colorful neighborhood. Here he shows women who have finished washing and hanging out their laundry in the days before electric appliances lightened these chores. Now the women stop to gossip while leaning on stair rails, or sit in the shade to avoid the hot afternoon sun.

Sheets, like many artist members of regional committees, proudly gave his painting as a gift to his country. The shabbily dressed women in Tenement Flats would be startled to discover that this painting would hang in the elegant surroundings of the White House. PWAP paintings like this one were displayed in reception areas to show President Roosevelt’s commitment to art and to ordinary Americans across the country.

1934: A New Deal for Artists exhibition label

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Related Books

1934: A New Deal for Artists

During the Great Depression, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised a “new deal for the American people,” initiating government programs to foster economic recovery. Roosevelt’s pledge to help “the forgotten man” also embraced America’s artists. The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) enlisted artists to capture “the American Scene” in works of art that would embellish public buildings across the country. Although it lasted less than one year, from December 1933 to June 1934, the PWAP provided employment for thousands of artists, giving them an important role in the country’s recovery. Their legacy, captured in more than fifteen thousand artworks, helped “the American Scene” become America seen.