Digging Out Car
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
Accession Number
1965.18.94
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Digging Out Car**, painted by Elizabeth R. Dewey 1934, captures quintessentially American moment of everyday resilience amid winter's grip. The oil painting depicts a male figure laboring with a shovel to free an automobile buried in deep snow, set against a domestic landscape featuring a church in the background. This scene evokes the harsh realities of rural or suburban life during the Great Depression, when blizzards and unreliable roads tested human endurance and ingenuity. As a work in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection—transferred from the U.S. Department of the Interior...