Noon

Schreiber was originally from Belgium and received extensive artistic training in major European art academies in Berlin and Dusseldorf in the early 1920s. He emigrated to New York City in 1928. From 1936 to 1939, he took extensive artistic trips through the United States and recorded his impressions of regional American life. Along with more noted artists like Thomas Hart Benton, Schreiber was considered a member of the Regionalist movement. This print depicts a farming couple in a Midwestern field. The farmer is shown resting from his plowing and eating lunch. With the image of the horse-drawn plow, Schreiber evokes a simpler, pre-industrial way of life in rural America. His view of the figures standing tall in the open plains reflects a tendency in the 1930s to glorify the image of the American farmer, who became an emblem of strong independent labor during the Depression. The narrative realism of the image promoted the reassuring truth of such nationalist myths.

Anabelen Zuniga