MABEL DWIGHT
In the Crowd (Faces in the Crowd).
Lithograph, 1931. 236x300 mm; 9x11 inches, full margins. Edition of 32. Signed, dated and titled in pencil, lower margin. Printed by George Miller, New York. A very good impression of this scarce lithograph. Robinson/Pirog 60.Dwight (1876-1955) was born in Cincinnati and travelled extensively as a child and young adult. She studied at the Hopkins School of Art in San Francisco in the late 1890s, though gave up her nascent reputation as an artist once she was married in 1906. In 1917, she separated from her husband and resumed painting, joining the Whitney Studio Club in New York. With the encouragement of Carl Zigrosser, who often urged American artists to make a pilgrimage to the Atelier Desjobert, she traveled to Paris in 1927 to learn lithography. He said of her, "Dwight did not just skim the surface of the comic and incongruous, but probed into the depths, ever imbued with pity and compassion, a sense of irony, and the understanding that comes of profound experience... There is detachment also, the sense of seeing life from afar, the long view of things." After returning to New York, her mature style blossomed, blending social realist subjects with her unique brand of satire. In 1928, she produced her first American lithographs and printed 17 works in collaboration with George Miller. She went on to produce lithographs for the Federal Arts Projects during the Great Depression.