Armchair
Medium
watercolor, colored pencil, graphite, and pen and ink on paper
Dimensions
overall: 35.5 x 27.6 cm (14 x 10 7/8 in.) Original IAD Object: c. 38"high
Classification
Index of American Design
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Index of American Design
Accession Number
1943.8.4571
Art Historical Context
Harry Mann Waddell's *Armchair* (1940) is a captivating rendering from the Index of American Design, a WPA Federal Art Project that documented everyday American crafts and folk art during the Great Depression. as part of this effort to preserve cultural heritage the artwork captures the form and details of a full-scale armchair standing about 38 inches high, transforming a humble piece of furniture into a study of national design ingenuity. Waddell employed a meticulous mixed-media technique—watercolor, colored pencil, graphite, pen and ink on paper (35.5 x 27.6 cm)—to evoke the chair's textu...
About the Artist
Harry Mann Waddell
Harry Mann Waddell (1876–1956) was an American artist born on June 22, 1876, in Ohio, whose career flourished in California after he settled in Los Angeles by 1936. There he established a studio, working as a freelance draftsman while creating fine art in his spare time. His early life and formal training remain not well documented, but by the late 1930s, Waddell had become a key contributor to th...