NEW YORK, NY.- Swann Galleries will open the winter 2025 season with an auction dedicated to the Artists of the WPA. Works in photography, cartography, printmaking, posters, and painting are all represented in this reflection on how the early twentieth century changed American culture.⁠ The sale is a timed online auction open for bidding on Thursday, January 16 at 10AM EST and will begin closing on Thursday, January 30 at 12 PM EST. Bidding is available on the Swann Galleries App and on live.swanngalleries.com. Exhibition hours are 12 pm to 5 pm on Saturday, January 25, and Monday, January 27 through Wednesday, January 29.

The economic hardships of the 1930s, as well as the drought across the North American prairie, were of great concern to lawmakers in Washington, DC. The agencies that formed as part of the New Deal, an “alphabet soup” that included the Works Progress Administration, the Farm Security Administration, and the Federal Art Project, put artists to work. These artists expressed empathy for the American farmer, as seen in Thomas Hart Benton’s romanticized vision of farm life in Missouri Farmyard, and Dorothea Lange’s tender documentation of the plight of families experiencing the Dust Bowl era.

Photo highlights include a portfolio of 10 F.S.A. photographs from 1975 ($6,000-9,000). Dorothea Lange is represented by State Employment Office at San Francisco, California, silver print, 1936, printed 1930s ($6,000-9,000), her emblematic Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, silver print,1936 printed circa 1993 ($4,000-6,000), and a selection of five silver prints from the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California ($2,500-3,500). Arthur Rothstein is well represented in the auction with Vernon Evans, migrant from South Dakota – Montana, silver print, 1946, printed circa 1980 ($1,000-1,500), and Girl at Gees Bend, Alabama, silver print, 1937, printed circa 1980 ($2,000-3,000). Walker Evans and Carl Mydans are also represented.

Paintings and original works are represented by Philip Howard Evergood’s oil-on-panel Great Neck Landscape, circa 1935 ($1,200-1,800); August Mosca’s Portrait of Joseph Stella, oil on canvas, 1944 ($1,000-1,500); Cecil Crosley Bell’s Horse Auction, New York, gouache on paper, 1937 ($1,500-2,500); Doris Emrick Lee’s Early Spring Landscape, oil on canvas ($3,000-5,000); and Paul Raphael Meltsner’s R.F.D. 36, oil on canvas ($4,000-6,000).

Prints featured in the sale include Thomas Hart Benton’s Missouri Farmyard, lithograph, 1936 ($2,000-3,000); Louis Schanker’s Jai-Alai, color woodcut, 1939 ($1,000-1,500); Peggy Brook Bacon’s The Artist, (Alexander Brook), charcoal, circa 1925 ($1,000-1,500); and Katherine Milhous’s Visit Pennsylvania / Pre-Revolutionary Costumes, lithograph poster, circa 1936 ($1,000-1,500).