Millard Sheets - Tenement Flats [1933-34]

Millard Sheets - Tenement Flats [1933-34], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

These ramshackle tenements were home to poor families in the Bunker Hill neighbourhood of downtown Los Angeles during the Great Depression. The artist failed to show that just to the left of this view a cable car line called Angels Flight offered a ride up the steep hill. In the painting a lone figure trudges up steps toward once elegant Victorian mansions that had degenerated into boarding-houses. Millard Sheets (Pomona, California, 1907 - Gualala, California, 1989), an up-and-coming young California artist, enjoyed drawing and painting the people and houses of this colourful neighbourhood. Here he shows women who have finished washing and hanging out their laundry in the days before electric appliances lightened these chores. Now the women stop to gossip while leaning on stair rails, or sit in the shade to avoid the hot afternoon sun.

[Oil on canvas, 102.1 x 127.6 cm]