Woman's Shoe
c. 1937
Medium
watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paperboard
Dimensions
overall: 29.3 x 23 cm (11 9/16 x 9 1/16 in.)
Classification
Index of American Design
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Index of American Design
Accession Number
1943.8.1944
Art Historical Context
**Woman's Shoe** by Bessie Forman created around 1937, is a captivating rendering from the *Index of American Design*, landmark WPA Federal Art Project during the Great Depression. This employed artists across the U.S. to document everyday American objects—folk art, crafts, and designs—through precise, colorful illustrations, preserving cultural heritage at a time of economic hardship. Forman's of a woman's shoe highlights the elegance of period footwear, capturing its form and details with documentary accuracy. Rendered in watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paperboard (29.3 x 23 cm), the w...
About the Artist
Bessie Forman
Bessie Forman is an artist whose works survive in museum collections in sufficient quantity to establish her as a genuine practitioner with a real body of output, even as the biographical details that would fully situate her within art history — her dates, her training, her national context — have not been preserved in the sources most accessible to researchers today. Her first name, Bessie, is ch...