Louise Emerson Ronnebeck - WPA Murals

WPA Murals

Emerson actively pursued commissions through the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, later renamed the Section of Fine Arts. Some people believed that during these difficult times there should be higher priorities than art. Harry Hopkins, head of the WPA appointed by FDR, said it best “Hell! They’ve got to eat just like other people”. Many feared that if the Depression continued for very long, a generation of artists would be lost and a fatal blow would be dealt to American culture. The Section focused on artwork for federal buildings, rather than state or municipal buildings, like the WPA/FAP. Between 1937 and 1944, Emerson entered 16 competitions for mural commissions including the Department of Justice Building, Washington, DC (1936, 1941), Fort Scott, Kansas (1937), Phoenix, Arizona (1937), Worland, Wyoming (1938), Dallas, Texas (1940), Grand Junction and Littleton, Colorado (1940), Social Security Building, Washington, D.C, (1940 and 1942), Amarillo, Texas (1941), and Los Angeles, California (1944). She won two commissions for post office murals, both funded by the Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture.

Emerson’s first Section commissioned mural, entitled The Fertile Land Remembers, (10’ x 5’ oil on canvas) was for the Worland, Wyoming Post Office in 1938. There was some controversy over a Colorado artist being chosen to execute a Wyoming mural, but Edward Rowan, the Superintendent of the Section of Painting & Sculpture said in a memo to the Director of Procurement, “The artists of Wyoming had an equal chance with those in Colorado to compete in the regional competition. The artists of Wyoming according to all records are very poor”. In preparation for the project, she researched Wyoming history and consulted with the Worland postmaster. The approved design depicted a determined looking pioneer farming family in a Conestoga wagon pulled by oxen heading directly toward the viewer. In the background/sky are Indians riding horses chasing buffalo, executed in a translucent cloud-like manner. The Indians and the pioneer farming family were both historically dependent on the land and they are shown being displaced by the new, thriving and growing oil industry. The mural has since been moved and installed in the downtown Casper, Wyoming Post Office in the Dick Cheney Federal Building.

Emerson’s second commission was for the post office and courthouse in Grand Junction, Colorado. The Harvest (7’x 9’ oil on crescent shaped canvas) was completed and installed in 1940. The Harvest depicts a young man and woman working together harvesting peaches, symbolizing “the richness that came to the land following the introduction of irrigation”, with a water wheel in the background. Barbara Melosh, in her book Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theatre, describes this frequently used Section theme as the “comradely ideal”. She writes, “ Ronnebeck invokes the comradely ideal in the image of shared labor, and she emphasizes the physicality of work in the man’s muscled arms and the woman’s sturdy figure”. Similar to her Wyoming mural, the man and the woman are equals, working towards a common goal. The mural depicts the Ute Indians leaving the valley on the right side and the white settlers, pushing them out from the left. The theme of displacement is effective and evocative of the time and the changes that had occurred and continued to occur in the West.

The Harvest mural had a life of mystery. By 1973, the mural was dirty and dull. It was shipped to Washington DC for restoration and subsequently forgotten. Until 1991, its whereabouts were unknown. The building manager of the Aspinall Federal Building in Grand Junction had come across frequent references to the mural, but could not locate it. Through perseverance and dogged detective work, he finally located it in New York, had it restored and returned it to Grand Junction. In January 1992, Emerson’s son and daughter, who had originally posed for the mural over 50 years earlier, unveiled it in a ceremony in the Grand Junction Aspinall Federal Building, where it remains today.