New Mint Bldg. S.F. Cal (WPA) by Jennie Lewis

New Mint Bldg. S.F. Cal (WPA) by Jennie Lewis

New Mint Bldg. S.F. Cal (WPA)

Jennie Lewis

Title

New Mint Bldg. S.F. Cal (WPA)

 
Artist

Jennie Lewis

  1892 - 1944 (biography)
Year
c. 1938  
Technique
lithograph 
Image Size
7 7/8 x 11 3/4" image 
Signature
pencil, lower left 
Edition Size
about 25 impressions 
Annotations
titled in pencil in lower right 
Reference
GSA WPA page 26; FA8745; FAMSF reference: acq. num. L43.2.381; NGA ref. 2008.115.3173 
Paper
wove watermarked Warren's Oldestyle 
State
published 
Publisher
California WPA Federal Art Project 
Inventory ID
AFAE107 
Price
SOLD
Description

This iteration of the San Francisco Mint was built in 1937, after the original mint proved to be too small. Lewis, in her trademark simplicity, presents the commanding Greek revival facade of the New Mint as the central focus of a familiar city, the famous, hilly San Francisco landscape in the background and a sky suggesting the arrival of fog.

In her relatively short career, Lewis captured a broad swath of her hometown of San Francisco in lithographs and paintings. San Francisco proved to be her muse, with no scene too ordinary or too iconic to be unworthy of her glance. Sand dunes and landlines, a particularly well situated street corner, a patch of garden, the marina, the Golden Gate: everything had a worthy angle according to Lewis.

Indeed, the paired down, stylized look of her work reflects the mode of the contemporary metropolitan city throughout a seminal evolution of art in the United States, from the WPA era, when much of her printmaking was executed, and into the beginning years of mid-century modernism, when, sadly, her career ended with her unexpected death in 1944.

This lithograph was published by the California Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project.