Visiting Card Tray
c. 1939
Medium
graphite on paperboard
Dimensions
overall: 22.9 x 29 cm (9 x 11 7/16 in.) Original IAD Object: 7 3/8" long; 5 1/2" wide; 1 3/4" high
Classification
Index of American Design
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Index of American Design
Accession Number
1943.8.2071
Art Historical Context
In the late 1930s, artist Helen Hobart captured the elegance of everyday American design with her precise graphite drawing of a *Visiting Card Tray*, created around 1939. Measuring 22.9 x 29 cm on paperboard, this work is part of the Index of American Design (IAD), a Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The IAD commissioned over 15,000 watercolor and graphite renderings by artists like Hobart to document the nation's folk art, crafts, and decorative objects, preserving cultural heritage during the Great Depression. Hobart's rendering depicts an original tray—7 3/...
About the Artist
Helen Hobart
Helen Hobart is an artist about whom the historical record offers limited documentation. Her nationality, dates of birth and death, and formal training have not been firmly established in the sources currently available to scholars, making a detailed account of her life and career difficult to provide with confidence. The works attributed to Hobart indicate an artist with evident technical skill ...