Wash Girl
- Date
- about 1938
- Material
- Linocut
- Classification
- Prints
- Collection
- Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
- Current Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- image: 10 × 7 7/8 in. (25.4 × 20 cm)
sheet: 12 3/4 × 10 1/4 in. (32.4 × 26 cm) - Credit Line
- Gift of the Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration
- Rights
- Public Domain
- Object Number
- 302:1943
NOTES
Towering over the landscape, the wash girl makes the world her own. Samuel Joseph Brown Jr.’s framing counteracts the heavy burdens of domestic labor such as washing clothes, labor that often fell to exploited Black women in the period. The graphic immediacy of Brown’s black-and-white linocut contrasts with the multicolored hues of his preferred medium—the remarkably fluid watercolors that won him praise from Eleanor Roosevelt, among many others. This expansiveness suggests how artists could be encouraged to translate familiar subject matter in a new way.
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