How did American artists weather the Great Depression? And how did that period of social and economic turmoil shape their later lives? The career of Mildred Bryant Brooks (1901–1995), an award-winning etcher, offers us some clues. Born in 1901 in Maryville, Missouri, Brooks grew up in Long Beach, California, and studied fine art at the University of Southern California. After marrying her husband in 1924, she began a teaching career. As a mother of two during the Great Depression, Brooks supported her family by teaching, creating prints, and even ink-printing works by other printmakers. Along with teaching and printmaking, Brooks made ends meet during the economic downturn with the help of an artist-focused relief program, the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP).
The U.S. government created the PWAP in December 1933 as a part of the New Deal—the series of programs established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s to reinvigorate the U.S. economy and relieve widespread poverty. Although the PWAP only lasted seven months (from December 1933 through the following summer), it employed over 3,700 artists, including painters, muralists, sculptors, and printmakers like Brooks. Through the program, artists were paid an average of $75 for each work they created. Art created through the PWAP was intended to decorate and embellish public buildings and parks with images of “The American Scene.”
According to a report by L. W. Robert Jr., then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, PWAP’s financial backing helped artists create 15,663 new works, including 1,076 etchings, 44 etching plates, and 1,518 prints. Robert wrote that “one obvious result of employing so many artists throughout the country was to bring to the public’s attention a great many younger and less known talents . . . our figures show that the Government’s agreement to employ artists at craftsmen’s wages acted as a tremendous stimulant to the artists’ creative powers.”
PWAP artists were selected based on two qualifications: “that they were actually in need of employment and second, that they were qualified as artists to produce work which would be an embellishment to public property.” According to scholars Gladys E. and Kurt Lang, Brooks was a perfect candidate: her husband couldn't find work, and she needed to support her family. Furthermore, Brooks had already earned some renown as a professional etcher, winning the award for the finest etching at the Los Angeles Museum’s International Bookplate Exhibition the prior year, 1932.
Brooks’s PWAP prints exhibit her impressive and detailed approach to etching. Although the etching techniques she used dated back to the 1600s, Brooks was able to incorporate her style and subject matter into the etching process, producing unique imagery. Etching involves using an etching needle, or a pointed tool, to create a design on a metal plate. An acid bath is used to engrave lines that have not been covered with an acid resistant substance, such as resin. Later, these engraved lines retain the ink that is spread across the plate, which then can be impressed onto a sheet of paper to create a print, a reversed copy of the original engraving.
Brooks’s PWAP prints emphasized natural scenes, as well as scenes depicting young children and families. Even before her participation in the PWAP, Brooks was best known for her ability to capture the movement and life of trees. Since her father was a scientist, Brooks spent her childhood exploring nature and plants. Unsurprisingly, five of the six prints she produced for the PWAP showcase her intricate use of her favorite element: trees. Artist Arthur Millier, who Brooks studied under at the Stickney Art School in Pasadena in the late 1920s, wrote that the trees that appeared in Brooks’s etchings, “are not just copied from nature but are recreated on the plate from her profound knowledge of [them].”
Outside of the PWAP, Brooks was an active educator and printer. In a 1934 letter to C. Allen Sherwin, a Graphic Arts collection aide, Brooks remarked, “I do all of my own printing, and a great deal for other etchers also.” Supporting other artists in this way was uncommon for women at the time because of the combination of technical skills and physical strength needed to print engravings. Brooks assisted others in the field by teaching at the Stickney Art School in Pasadena, California, as well as the Los Angeles County Art Institute. She also ventured into educating artists outside of the classroom, hosting lectures and talks to discuss her etching techniques. Her lectures demonstrated her clear and compelling teaching methods. In a reflection on Brooks’s 1933 lecture to the Women’s Athletic Club in Southern California, Nelle Hightower wrote:
Mrs. Brooks took the listeners . . . into an aesthetic lane and thrilled them into awed whispers when she permitted them to handle some of her beautiful etchings . . . then to their absolute delight she inked and printed an etching right before their eyes and passed it around for inspection.
To cement her success with teaching, Brooks even created a 1959 instructional film titled The Art of Etching, which showcased her techniques and processes.
Among her many accomplishments, Brooks served as the president of the California Society of Etchers eight times. She exhibited her work across the country, including at the Smithsonian’s U.S. National Museum (the predecessor of the National Museum of American History). The solo exhibit of her work, organized by the museum’s Graphic Arts unit, was held in March 1936. The show included 40 prints, six of which, later acquired by the museum, had originally been prepared with PWAP funding. The announcement of the exhibit proclaimed that, when viewing Brooks’s works, one would think that they were executed by a “man of power and strength.” However, the same announcement noted that the details included in her work brought a “feminine atmosphere.”
Brooks won over twenty national and international awards during her almost 40-year career as an artist. Among these awards was the main prize at the 1937 annual Chicago Society of Etchers exhibition. Brooks was the first woman recipient of the prize. As her vision deteriorated and as foreign printmaking supplies became more difficult to obtain during World War II, Brooks shifted to other types of art, such as painting murals and working as an interior decorator. She died in 1995, at the age of 93. Throughout her long career, Brooks found ways to share her skills and passion for art with others.
This blog is associated with the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative and the 2023 Because of Her Story Cohort Internship Program.
Brooklyn Lile (she/her) is a Because of Her Story intern in the museum’s Graphic Arts Collection. She recently graduated with a Master of Arts in History from Western Kentucky University.
