Pickaninny Watch Stand
c. 1940
Medium
watercolor, graphite, and goauche on paper
Dimensions
overall: 34.5 x 24.8 cm (13 9/16 x 9 3/4 in.)
Classification
Index of American Design
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Index of American Design
Accession Number
1943.8.2490
Art Historical Context
Visitors to the National Gallery of Art encounter *Pickaninny Watch Stand a vivid rendering by artist William O. Fletcher from 1940. This work belongs to the esteemed Index of American Design, WPA Federal Art Project initiative during the Great Depression that commissioned artists to document America's rich folk art heritage through precise, colorful illustrations. Fletcher's depiction captures a whimsical yet historically loaded figural watch stand—a small wooden sculpture shaped like a Black child, of early 20th American vernacular design used to hold pocket watches. Crafted in watercolor, ...
About the Artist
William O. Fletcher
William O. Fletcher is represented in museum collections by a body of work that demonstrates consistent artistic output and the kind of sustained production that distinguishes professional or semi-professional practice from occasional art-making. While his biographical details remain unrecorded in the sources readily available to researchers — his dates, nationality, and training all currently unk...