Mission Hills, San Francisco

Artist: Jennie Lewis, American, 1892–1944
Associated: Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration, Washington, D.C., active 1935–1943
Date: 1939
Material: Crayon lithograph with watercolor (hand coloring)
made in: San Francisco, California, United States, North and Central America
Classification: Prints
Collection: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
Current Location: Not on view
Dimensions: image: 8 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (22.2 x 29.8 cm)
sheet: 11 1/2 x 16 1/4 in. (29.2 x 41.3 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of the Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration
Rights: Public Domain
Object Number: 212:1943

NOTES

Looking out across the neighborhoods of San Francisco, Jennie Lewis dissolved the peaks of steeples and houses into a soft haze across the city. The hand-applied watercolor transforms the scene into a surreal landscape with a purple sky. Critics of the period praised Lewis’s work as “primitive” or “naive,” highlighting the directness and legibility of her approach. With the support of Federal Art Project head Holger Cahill, the Museum of Modern Art in New York featured Lewis’s prints in a one-woman show in 1940.

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