Art in the New Deal Era

A native of Iowa and resident of Davenport, John Vincent Bloom (1906-2002) drew inspiration from his surroundings and personal experiences. In so doing, he has left a lasting impression of the small rural communities scattered across the Iowa landscape and the lives sustained by the predominantly agrarian economy. Bloom’s singular interest in depicting local, American subject matter reflects his life-long commitment to Regionalism. Striving to create art that was uniquely American, Regionalist artists shunned the frenetic lifestyle of the metropolis and focused on depicting the American heartland. In the wake of the Great Depression, reassuring images of rural America validated the worth and power of a nation struggling with economic hardship and political instability.  
  

Bloom was introduced to Regionalism in 1932, when he participated in Grant Wood’s Stone City Art Colony and School, an institution aimed to further Regionalist philosophy. His work with Grant Wood continued when the latter led the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) for Iowa. Funded by the federal government to help alleviate the economic crisis, the PWAP created jobs for unemployed artists by commissioning large-scale murals and other decorations for public buildings. Intended to both improve the physical appearance of the buildings and edify local citizens about their traditions, these murals served to make federally sponsored public art accessible to the public. Bloom assisted Wood in painting murals for Iowa State University library and the Des Moines Public library (the PWAP mural designs under Grant Wood for the Des Moines Public Library were never installed), and before receiving the commission to design and paint a mural for the new post office of DeWitt, Iowa. Completed in 1937, the mural Shucking Corn was followed by another government-funded project for the Tipton post office, the mural Cattle of 1940. Opportunities, however, soon ran out and Bloom had to turn to commercial design to earn a living. After retiring in 1969, Bloom returned to painting murals, basing his compositions on the drawings developed in the 1930s and 1940s. Thus, many of his later murals make reference to agrarian practices of the past.  

This model for the History of Dairying mural cycle in Dairy Industry Building Courtyard features three Jersey cows are bending their heads low to drink water while a bull stands and looks over their heads. The "History of Dairying Mural and Fountain" marks the grand and difficult start of Christian Petersen's twenty-one-year career as campus sculptor-in-residence. Made of terra cotta, the entire bas relief mural measures over seventy feet long, contains forty-four panels, and required more than 600 hours of kiln firing. However, as was typical of Petersen's work, it began with a small model in clay later cast into plaster, and then progressed to life-size models before the final work was cast and fired. This model represents the central focal panel of the History of Dairying Mural and Fountain. Sculptured in unusually high relief for such a large work of terra cotta, it was the most challenging section of the mural for the artist and his collaborator, Paul E. Cox, ceramics engineer at Iowa State. The small models, like this one, were created for the approval of Martin Mortensen, chairman of the Dairy Industry Department, and Iowa State College President Raymond M. Hughes. Once approved, Petersen expanded his design into full-scale, one-piece bas reliefs that were later divided into sections suitable in size for the kiln. After eight weeks of firing test panels, the pair launched into eight months of carefully maintained firings that lasted approximately three days each. The History of Dairying Mural and Fountain is one of the twelve major public works of art on campus produced by Petersen during his campus tenure. When President Raymond Hughes commissioned Christain Petersen for a fountain for the courtyard of the Dairy Industry Building in 1933, he had no idea the extent to which Petersen would expand that project. From a simple fountain, Petersen devised a large sculptural mural that would fill the entire back wall of the courtyard. The centerpiece, as shown in his First Sketch, was at first to be a female figure. This first plan did not meet with Grant Wood's approval, so Petersen altered his design into a seven-panel mural whose central fountain became the thoroughly Regionalist subject matter of an agricultural scene. The dairy cattle in Petersen's new design seem to drink from a trompe l'oeil pool. This sculpture may have been Petersen's response to Grant Wood's request for a specific model of what he planned to do for the new version of the design for the central panel of the Dairy mural. 

Christian Petersen’s First Sketch for “The History of Dairying,” was created around December 1933 – January 1934. Featured on this drawing, Petersen labeled this as his “first thot” [sic] for The History of Dairying mural. This sketch shows a large and complex sculptural frieze with a central fountain figure where water would have cascaded from a shallow bowl into the pool below. The brown kraft paper was often used by Grant Wood for his drawings and strongly recommended it, suggesting this sketch and initial design was realized in the PWAP studio in Iowa City. Several figures remain unresolved in the sketch as Petersen very early on abandoned this Beaux Arts design in favor of a more regionalist aesthetic, perhaps due to Wood’s direction. However, Petersen did retain some elements of the original design that can be found in the final The History of Dairying mural cycle. For example, historical methods of dairying are portrayed on the left and modern ones on the right, with both narratives moving from the outside toward the center fountain. The cattle in the sketch already possess an angularity that would be further emphasized in the revised compositions. 

DeLong, Lea Rosson. When Tillage Begins, Other Arts Follow: Grant Wood and Christian Petersen Murals. First ed., University Museums, Iowa State University, 2006.  

The portrait bust of Dr. Martin Mortensen was created by Christian Petersen to be placed in the Dairy Industry building. This portrait bust was also exhibited in the Iowa Art Salon at the Iowa State Fair in 1939. Mortensen (1872-1953) was the Academic Dean of Dairy Industry at Iowa State from 1909 to 1938. In this role, Mortensen helped plan and create the Dairy Industry complex. This included Christian Petersen’s mural, History of Dairying which was designed specifically for the Dairy Industry Building. Mortensen provided the building information and information for the various dairying processes for Petersen’s sculpted mural cycle, consisting of a seven-panel series of reliefs. It was this collaboration with faculty, encouraged by President Hughes and supported by Applied Arts faculty Joanne Hansen and Zenobia Ness, that led to the other colleges at Iowa State to request sculpture for their own buildings.                                       
  
Mortensen was born in Denmark in 1872 and came to the United States at the age of twenty-one. After managing an Iowa creamery for several years, he enrolled at Iowa State College in 1897 and took a course in dairy industry. In 1909, he returned to Iowa State as the head of the Dairy Industry Department until 1938 and remained as a professor until 1953. In addition to authoring numerous publications on dairy research, many honors were awarded to Mortensen for his leadership in the dairy industry. He was an honorary member of the American Dairy Science Association, having served on the board for several years. In 1950, he was awarded the Commanders Cross of the Order of Danneborg by the Danish government in recognition of a lifetime of outstanding achievement in the dairy industry and especially as a teacher of dairy subjects at Iowa State.  

Orr Cleaveland Fisher (1885-1974) studied art through correspondence schools and the Cumming School of Art in Des Moines in 1913 and 1921. While in Des Moines, he also studied at Drake University and worked with Jay N. "Ding" Darling, the famous political cartoonist for the Des Moines Register. As the Great Depression left many artists without work, Fisher found employment under the New Deal Programs Public Works of Art Project, Works Progress Administration, and Treasury Relief Art Project, Section of Fine Arts.  

Through the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, artists were invited to submit designs for consideration to decorate federal buildings, including Post offices. Fisher submitted suggestions for several post offices and was ultimately selected to paint murals for the US Post Offices in Mount Ayr and Forest City, Iowa. The drawing, Evening on the Farm, is one of the cartoon studies for the Forest City Post Office mural, which Fisher would have submitted to the Federal Works Agency. After a selection process, he painted a small-scale study to submit to the federal government. The painted study is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. After a rigorous submission process, the Evening on the Farm mural was commissioned to be painted, and the 5-by-13-foot canvas was completed and installed in the Forest City Post Office in June 1942. The Forest City mural design depicts a thriving family farm in a modern setting, exploring the role of the farmer in local history and the environment of rural life.  

Aside from being an artist, he worked for the railroad, drove a six-horse freight wagon, and produced articles, cartoons and illustrations for various publications. Fisher later lived at the historic Woodstock Art Colony (Woodstock, NY) before moving to California where he resided until his death in 1974.  

“Orr C. Fisher.” Smithsonian American Art Museum, americanart.si.edu/artist/orr-c-fisher-1553.  

Lewis, Riley. “Heritage Series: Celebrating a Proud Ag Past.” Forest City Summit Tribune, 9 Jan. 2007. 

Known for his directorship of the New Deal art programs in Iowa, Grant Wood was also a nationally recognized artist. However, his family was not immune to the economic hardships of the Great Depression. To provide financial assistance to his sister, Wood employed a concept popularized by Currier and Ives in the 1800's of an artist directing staff to color prints. He trained his sister Nan Wood Graham (1899-1990) and her husband to watercolor his only mature series of still lifes, entitled Wild Flowers, Tame Flowers, Fruits and Vegetables. This took over three years to complete one thousand prints published by Associated American Artists, selling by mail for $10 each. This was part of a greater effort to make art affordable and accessible during the Great Depression.   

The print showcases a vibrant arrangement of flowers, reflecting Wood's appreciation for the natural world and his roots in rural American life. Included in a four-part series of still lifes, these prints celebrate the natural and cultivated bounty of Iowa. Wildflowers shows a shift from Wood’s classic farm scenery to a more intimate look at Iowan landscapes, demonstrating Wood’s passion for painting the everyday life of Americans, albeit from a different perspective.  

John Drake Pusey (1905-1966) was a muralist born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He graduated from Northwestern University and attended the Chicago Art Institute and Yale University School of Fine Arts before moving to France to study art at the Musee du Louvre and Musee du Luxembourg.

Pusey returned to the United States before the Great Depression began, where he was fortunate to be commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project to create murals in public buildings, under the direction of well-known American painter, Grant Wood. Under Wood’s supervision and guidance, Pusey further developed his artistic style. While working on the library murals for Iowa State at the PWAP studio at the University of Iowa, he met Christian Petersen, who was working on the design for the History of Dairying Mural for the Dairy Industry building also for Iowa State. He and Petersen, whom Pusey often addressed as Pete, began a friendship and correspondence that outlasted their time on the Project.

Like Petersen, Pusey continued working as an artist after the New Deal programs ended. He spent two years painting a mural in the home of the wealthy Eli Lilly, worked as a set designer for Universal Studios, and painted murals at the San Francisco World Fair in 1939. After retiring from the military, Pusey continued creating murals and became the Artist in Residence at Dickinson College in 1957.

John D. Pusey Papers, MS 241, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

Despite the ominous thunderheads in the background of Approaching Storm, the men working in the field continue their efforts to cover the tops of the shocks of wheat with additional sheaves to prevent the crop from becoming soaked in the oncoming storm. According to Wood, the Midwestern farmer is the richest form of material for an artist:  

He needs interpretation. [...] The life of the farmer, engaged in a constant conflict with natural forces, is essentially dramatic. The nomadic movements of cattlemen, the great dust storms, the floods following [drought], the sacrifices forced upon once prosperous families – all these elements and many more are colorful, significant, and intensely dramatic.  

Wood, Grant. Revolt Against the City. Clio Press, 1935.  

Often mistaken for Works Progress Administration (WPA) art, post office murals were actually executed by artists working for the Section of Fine Arts. Commonly known as "the Section," it was established in 1934 and administered by the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department. The mural Shucking Corn was created for the DeWitt, Iowa Post Office by John Bloom and was painted in 1939 with funding from the Treasury Section of Fine Arts for what was then the town post office (now the City Hall).  

The cartoon study for Shucking Corn would have been a vital step in the creation of this mural. The steps followed in creating these murals involved making preliminary sketches, finished drawings in color, enlarging the drawings on brown wrapping paper, transferring the enlarged designs to the stretched canvas panels through perforated outlines made with a spiked wheel, and finally painting the canvases with oils.  

Corn is the dominant motif in this print, depicting the fertile Iowa farmland. Perhaps a metaphor for the rich artistic movement also growing there. In the forward of the book Iowa Artists of the First Hundred Years, published in 1939, Grant Wood wrote:  

For a long time, it was generally thought that Iowa's only proper field was the raising of corn and hogs, and that creative art [...] was the last thing in the world to look for in this Midland state. This conception, we now realize, is false. If Iowa has not produced a phenomenal number of artists, it has at least produced its share, and their contribution is well worthy of general note.  

Among those pioneering the Midwestern art scene was Grant Wood himself. True to Wood’s influential regionalist style, Fertility, with its Gothic-arch barn and burgeoning cornfield, harkens to the agricultural productivity of Iowa.  

Wood, Grant. “Foreword.” Iowa Artists of the First Hundred Years, Wallace-Homestead Company, Des Moines, IA, 1939. 

Born in the small rural community of Schaller, Iowa, Francis Follet "Mac" McCray (1899-1960) received his professional art training at the Art Institute of Chicago and then specialized in commercial art with courses at the Vogue School of Commercial Art (Chicago) and the Mayer-Booth School of Commercial Art (Chicago). McCray's art interests carried into several different forms including portraiture, murals, illustration, and painting. Early in his career, McCray was employed by Langenfeld Studios to ornament Catholic churches throughout the Midwest. McCray frequently competed in the Iowa Art Salon at the Iowa State Fair, winning awards for his work. He later was an instructor in the State University of Iowa’s (now University of Iowa) Fine Arts Department, sharing a studio with Grant Wood until Wood’s death in 1942. 

Like Bertrand Adams, McCray was among the Federal Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) artists who worked on Grant Wood's designs for Iowa State College library early in 1934. He was one of Wood's closest colleagues, and Wood entrusted him to oversee the final installation of the library murals, Breaking the Prairie, painted in 1937-1937 after the PWAP had ended. The painting was carried out in a mural studio in the new Fine Arts Building at the State University of Iowa. According to fellow muralist Lee Allen, who also helped in supervising the painting of this final mural: 

We were commissioned to do a tryptic for an alcove on the ground floor of the Ames Library [at Iowa State]. Grant Wood did the small, preliminary drawings, Francis McCray enlarged and refined the drawing, while I worked out the color for it in oil on a scale model. Only a handful of us were left to do the final painting because the original government project had been completed. Except for Grant and Mac (McCray), the rest of us were registered as students and paid out of government ‘Student Relief’ funds. 

While working together on the PWAP as part of the New Deal, McCray and Christian Petersen, who was working on his mural design for the History of Dairying, developed a friendship. McCray admired Petersen's talent for sculpture, and, like fellow PWAP artists Bertrand Adams and John Pusey, Petersen created this portrait bust of him. 

DeLong, Lea Rosson. When Tillage Begins, Other Arts Follow: Grant Wood and Christian Petersen Murals. University Museums, Iowa State University, 2006.

Raine, K. (2021). Wood, Grant D. Iowa State University Biographical Dictionary.

An unidentified newspaper clipping, likely dating around the spring of 1937, shows the second group of artists painting Breaking the Prairie Sod in Grant Wood’s new mural studio in the Fine Arts Building at the University of Iowa. This mural is the first in the narrative cycle of Wood’s murals in the Iowa State library, however, it was the last to be painted. Up to this time, Wood had given Francis McCray the main responsibility for supervising the execution of the mural, which took years of planning, research, and designing. 

Tree Planting Group was the very first lithograph created by Grant Wood. Wood often borrowed subjects from his childhood memories of a one-room schoolhouse near Anamosa. His sister Nan noted that, “As Grant meandered to and from school each day, he observed the world around him – the plowed fields, the growing corn, the seasons, the animals, the people, and the little country school. In later years, he immortalized these scenes in paintings, [including] Arbor Day.” This print is a reiteration of that painting, both compositionally as well as thematically. Wood deeply respected his nurturing teachers and pays artistic homage to them. Wood, an educator himself, taught art in the Cedar Rapids public schools until 1925, and resumed formal teaching in 1932 as co-director of the Stone City Art Colony for two years.   

This lithograph also serves as a timely reminder of another New Deal Program, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), established by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and concluding in 1942. This was a government program that provided jobs for unemployed young men during the Great Depression. The CCC employed about 3 million men nationwide and made significant contributions to the beautification and renewal of the country's public lands. Workers performed a variety of tasks, including fighting forest fires, planting trees, building roads and bridges, and developing state and national parks.  

Corn, Wanda M. Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision. Yale University Press. New Haven, 1983.

Born on a farm in Delphos, Iowa, Orr Cleavland Fisher (1885-1974) had an adventurous career as an illustrator, muralist, and painter – skills that he employed as a WPA artist. In a 1930 autobiographical article, he stated his interest in art was kindled at an early age:  

[While attending] country school, I exhibited a talent for drawing by making pictures on my slate. The barn doors, granary walls and every place on the old homestead where a smooth surface appeared was a temptation too strong to resist the markings of my pencil or chalk. Hence everything on the old farm was either decorated with comics or carved with knife in crude designs. I used to draw with my finger in the plow furrow where the over-turned sod presented a smooth surface. On the way to school, I would dig from the clay hills red and yellow soft rocks to color my pictures at school." 

Fisher’s 1934 painting, Farm Yard, was purchased by Iowa State College from Grant Wood's federal Public Works of Art Projects Studio. The artwork depicts a modest farm in need of some repair and a single cow standing in the pasture. The forecast of the surrounding nature – the greening grass and budding trees – allude to the coming of spring – a time of hope and renewal. Painted in the depths of the Great Depression, the painting provides a sense of hope for a better future. 

Donna L. Howard and Nancy Lorance. “Orr C. Fisher.” Orr C. Fisher WPA Artist, 26 Mar. 1999, www.wpamurals.org/fisherorr.htm.  

The Ames Post Office mural is an important example of Depression-era public art created by local artist Lowell Houser. This mural was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives, which aimed to provide work for unemployed artists, enhance public buildings, and represent an enduring image of the American scene. The mural was commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, which succeeded the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) program established in 1934.  

Houser won the Ames mural competition, but his mural design was not among the original selection. On November 2, 1935, an appointed local committee consisting of wealthy art patron Carl Weeks, art librarian and curator Louise Orwig, and architect John Normile met in Des Moines to perform an evaluation of the competition entries. Their task was to determine the aesthetic merit of the mural submissions regarding technical execution and subject. After an initial selection, Orwig then recounted the committee’s decision and recommended Houser for the commission instead, exclaiming, “I consider Lowell Houser outstanding in ability and [strongly recommend] the Treasury Dept. [to] use him for designing the Ames mural. I believe that he would make something of great value to the community in which he lives and is interested.” Edward Rowan, Section Superintendent of the Treasury Relief Art Project, judiciously replied that he hoped “a fine piece of work will result.” After receiving his contract from the Treasury Department in August of 1936, Houser installed his mural, Evolution of Corn, on April 20, 1938. Of Houser’s design, Rowan explained it presented an “unusually intelligent conception tying together the ancient Mayan and American corn agriculture.” Regarding the composition and innovative subject matter, he concluded Houser’s mural sketch “seemed to us the only design in the competition with a really significant theme.” In overturning the original committee decision in favor of Houser’s, the Section recognized the greater merit of Houser’s mural as history painting. While Houser’s conception of Evolution of Corn conforms to the academic definitions of history painting, he did not choose traditional Greek or Roman subject matter for his mural. However, he did reference conventional history painting in his portrayal of the distant past by choosing New World equivalents. 

Observers of the Grant Wood mural cycle in Parks Library may notice Houser’s name among the 14 artists credited on the text panel, including another Ames artist, Bertrand Adams. As the name suggests, these murals were inspired by a quote by Daniel Webster: “When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.” In a similar agrarian spirit, Houser’s own mural contrasts modern Midwestern corn production with ancient Mayan cultivation, emphasizing Mayans as among the earliest growers of maize. 

Louise Orwig to Edward Rowan, 11/9/1935; Rowan to Orwig, 11/13/1935; Edward Rowan to Carl Weeks, 11/26/1935. 

Robertson, Breanne. “‘The Cultivation of Corn in Mayan and Modern Times’: Lowell Houser’s Winning Design for the Ames Mural Competition.” The Annals of Iowa, vol. 70, no. 1, Jan. 2011. Copyright The State Historical Society of Iowa, 2011. 

The original print was commissioned by author Sterling North as an illustrated cover for his book “Plowing on Sunday” published in 1934 by the Macmillan Company. The original drawing (conte crayon, ink, colored pencil, and gouache on brown wove paper) is housed by the Rhode Island School of Design and measures 18 x 17-1/8 in.