Woman Ironing
Julius Tanzer American
Publisher WPA
Not on view
This luminous image of a woman ironing is one of tens of thousands of prints published in the 1930s and 1940s by the Works Progress Administration (WPA, also called the Work Projects Administration), an agency operated by the United States government to provide widespread work relief during the Great Depression. Like many other artists employed by the WPA’s Federal Art Project, New York printmaker Tanzer produced images that depict Americans at work—both inside and outside of the home. Whether the woman portrayed here is taking care of her own household or that of an employer, her quiet concentration on her task reflects the print’s immediate context as well as the longer visual tradition around women engaged in domestic work.
This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
