Robert Gwathmey

Roert Gwathmey was an artist in the 1930s who focussed on social realism and portrayed the working man an the cotton pickers in the south.

Character background Info.
Name- Robert Gwathmey.

Where do you live? I live in Philidelphia

Married to Rosalie Hook of Charolette North Carolina

Imediate family- wife and father, also Robert, a railroad engineer, had been born in Richmond in 1866 and died on May 27, 1902, eight months before Robert Jr. entered the world. He was killed instantly when his locomotive exploded. Witnesses could never obliterate the memory of seeing him blown forty feet in the air.His wife, Eva Mortimer Harrison, two years younger than Robert Sr., had been employed as a public school teacher. She died near Petersburg, Virginia, on June 1, 1941, when a bus skidded into the station wagon in which she occupied the front passenger seat. Her daughter-in-law, Rosalie Hook Gwathmey, who was driving, and her two surviving daughters, Katherine and Ida Carrington, who were riding in the second seat, were severely injured. One of the daughters suffered cruel cuts and was partially scalped. The other lost a number of teeth in this collision. Robert, the artist, and his three-year-old son, Charles, were seated in the rear of the wagon and escaped with bumps and bruises. Eva was buried next to her husband two days after the accident. The sequence of strange tragedies is even longer. Eva and Robert Sr. had four children. The oldest, Mary Louise, died in 1923 at age twenty-six in a horseback riding accident.

work profession- social realist professional artist. 1939 - 1941, taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology, 1943-1968 taught at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York, 1973 Robert was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Race- White

Religion- Liberal

Religion?

Political Affiliation- Workers Progress Administration (WPA) the most abitious New Deal agency.





The year 1934, the Workers Progress Administration (WPA) has just been founded as the most abitious New Deal agency. My name is Robeort Gwathmey, I am a White virginia born artist living in New York. I came from a middle class family but we never really felt the depression like others. We had a garden, cats, dogs, pigeons, and everything we needed. I think had something to do with our wealthy relatives but i rarely saw them. I was born in 1903 and live with my beautiful wife Rosalie Hook of Charlotte, North Carolina. She is an artist and photographer who is working on a series documentary on Blacks in the South. This documentary has influenced and created inspiration for my painting. I have became know for being a Social Realist in the depiction of life in the rural south. I studied Art from 1925-1926 at the Maryland Institute of Design in baltimor and from 1926-1930 I went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. After this I taught in a the irls Philedelphia Beaver College, where i could work two days a week and spend the rest of the week i could focus on my paintings. I then went on to teach at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and in my later years i taught at the cooper Union School Of Art in New York.