Lumber Industry

William Arthur Cooper, Lumber Industry, 1934, oil on canvas, 24 ¹⁄₈ x 29 ⁷⁄₈ in. (61.3 x 75.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.154

Artwork Details

Title: Lumber Industry
Artist: William Arthur Cooper
Date: 1934
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 24 ¹⁄₈ x 29 ⁷⁄₈ in. (61.3 x 75.9 cm)
Credit Line: Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Occupation — industry — lumber
Architecture — industry — mill
New Deal — Public Works of Art Project — Tennessee
Object Number: 1964.1.154
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1964.1.154

Artwork Description

This painting of a Tennessee sawmill processing raw tree trunks looks like a straightforward image of a thriving southern industry. But the beginning of the Great Depression had curtailed American building. Starting in 1929, mills like this one had been closed. For three years, "there was no hard-wood industry." By January 1933, the American forest industries that supplied boards for construction were in a crisis, termed "one of the pressing national problems of the day." Finally, as Federal construction projects began around the country in the spring and summer of 1933, the hardwood industry and other suppliers began to recover.

Logging crews returned to southern forests and logs poured into reopened saw mills like the one portrayed by William A. Cooper. Cooper, an African American minister who used art to explore the character and situation of his race, specialized in portraits. While this painting stresses not people but machinery such as the cranes and chute that take lumber into the sawmill, it might easily escape our notice that many of the workers in mills like this one were black. The white plumes from steam-driven band saws and the piles of logs ready for sawing were welcome sights for Cooper's southern African American community and their white colleagues.

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.