Family Flats by Millard Owen Sheets

Family Flats by Millard Owen Sheets

Family Flats

Millard Owen Sheets

Title

Family Flats

 
Artist
Year
1934  
Technique
lithograph 
Image Size
15 11/16 x 21 3/4" image 
Signature
pencil signed, lower right 
Edition Size
not stated, circa 50 
Annotations
pencil titled 
Reference
Cleveland Museum of Art reg# 1936.108; Huntington 91.284.164; 
Paper
heavy Japanese hosho 
State
published 
Publisher
artist 
Inventory ID
PMJ379 
Price
SOLD
Description

Millard Sheets never officially editioned this print, preferring to call each impression an "artist's proof." Over the years we worked with Millard Sheets we sold a number of impressions of 'Family Flats' including 3 impressions at an exhibition of his prints at the Annex Galleries in December of 1985, all noted by him as 'artist's proofs' in the consignment agreements. At the time this print was created, the mid 1930's, his editions in other print media were 50 impressions, at most - most lithographs were not editioned.

In 1934 Sheets had printed his large PWAP color lithograph "California Landscape" with Los Angeles printer Will Kistler, using plates and an offset press. In 1935 he was working with Kistler's son Lynton, drawing on stones as he did for this lithograph.

The image for 'Family Flats' was drawn after his PWAP painting 'Tenement Flats' of 1934, done when he was 27 years old. Shown in the exhibition "1934: A New Deal for Artists" the painting was selected by F.D. Roosevelt to hang at the White House to show the President's commitment to the Arts and the American people.

These ramshackle tenements were home to poor families in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles during the Great Depression. "Zigzagging clotheslines rhyme with stair railings to set a dynamic, bustling scene populated with a rich cast of characters: young women, one cradling a baby, gossiping on the porch and stoop; a toddler about to break free from his mother's efficient clutches; black women appearing to tend stolidly to the laundry; a matronly white observer at the foot of the stairs, keeping watch over all the action." (LA Times: 11/25/08)

regionalist