Portrait of a Miner
Portrait of a Miner
Artist
Philip Evergood
(1901 - 1973)
Dateca. 1938
MediumEtching
Dimensionsplate: 7 1/4 × 6 1/4 in. (18.4 × 15.9 cm)
Framed: 14 1/2 × 13 1/2 × 1 1/8 in.
Framed: 14 1/2 × 13 1/2 × 1 1/8 in.
ClassificationsPrint
Credit LineCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2012.103
Signedl.r., in plate: Philip Evergood
l.r., in margin, in pencil: Philip Evergood
Accession number
2012.103
On View
Not on viewLabel TextIn the early years of the Great Depression, Philip Evergood associated with members of the so-called “Fourteenth Street School” of artists in New York—a group of realist artists who lived and worked in the vicinity of Fourteenth Street and Union Square—who championed the underclass in their images.
Evergood's Portrait of a Miner is unsettling in the extreme foreshortening of the man's right arm and pickaxe slung over his shoulder, as well as in the seemingly missing left arm, with only the hand and cigarette showing. Despite the compressed space and almost cartoon-like exaggeration of the miner's smiling face, Evergood intends not to make fun, but to evoke sympathy for the worker.
Inscribedl.l., in margin, in pencil: Portrait of a Miner
l.c., in margin, in pencil: To President Harry
