Wednesday, January 24, 2018

New Deal Ice Art (4/5): "Filling the Ice House"

Above: "Filling the Ice House," an oil painting by Harry Gottlieb (1895-1992), created while he was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), 1934. I featured this painting on my blog about two-and-a-half years ago. A description for the painting, on the website of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, reads, "In January 1934, artist Harry Gottlieb signed on with the PWAP and looked for American workers he could paint near his home in the artists' colony of Woodstock, New York. He found these men harvesting ice off lakes and streams as local men had done every winter since the early 1800s. They sawed the thick layer of natural ice into long strips and then cut off large blocks.... [they used] long hooks and wooden ramps to maneuver the slick, heavy ice into large commercial icehouses where they neatly stacked the blocks... Throughout the year icehouses along the Hudson River stored ice that was shipped by train to New York City. Families and grocers put the ice into insulated iceboxes that kept food from spoiling... and then electric refrigerators became popular. When Gottlieb documented the natural ice business it was gradually melting away." Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

No comments:

Post a Comment