Cotton Picking in Georgia (Georgia Cotton Crop)

Inscriptions

Signed, in graphite, lower right margin: Dox Thrash; titled, in graphite, lower left margin: Cotton picking in Georgia; numbered, in graphite, on reverse: L0822D Watermark: Vidalon

Label

This dark, indistinct image of a family surrounded by mounds of cotton beside a ramshackle house is likely based on artist Dox Thrash’s recollections of his youth in rural Georgia, where he was raised in a former slave cabin. Thrash left home at the age of 14 and workedhis way north as an itinerant laborer, eventually attending night classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before settling in Philadelphia. In 1937 Thrash helped develop the printmaking technique used to create this image, the carborundum mezzotint process—or, as he called it in honor of his late mother, “Opheliagraph.” The print’s rich tonalities and softened forms enhance the sense of a hazily recalled memory, while the image reflects the strength found in a family working together despite economic hardships.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ARTH 17, The Power of Place: Urban and Rural Images in American Art, 1900-1945, Sarah Powers, Winter 2014

ARTH 17, The Power of Place: Urban and Rural Images in American Art, 1900-1945, Sarah Powers, Winter 2014

ARTH 71, The "American Century": Modern Art in the United States, Mary Coffey, Winter 2015

ARTH 71, The "American Century": Modern Art in the United States. Mary Coffey, Winter 2015

AAAS 88.19, Contemporary African-American Artists, Michael Chaney, Summer 2021

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

English 30.01, African and African American Studies 34.01, Early Black American LIterature, Michael Chaney, Winter 2024

African and African American Studies 7.01, Picturing African American History, Michael Chaney, Spring 2024

Exhibition History

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 12 - July 22, 2022.

Provenance

Bonhams, London, June 2011; sold to a private collector; consigned to Dolan/Maxwell, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; sold to present collection, 2013.

Catalogue Raisonne

John Ittmann, Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2002), 90–129 (this print, no. 114)

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