Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
March 8 - June 20, 2007
Exhibited at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Around 1943, artist Honoré Sharrer first conceived of the painting now known as Tribute to the American Working People. The resulting polyptych consists of five panels, each meticulously painted in oil on composition board.
The Archives of American Art acquired Honoré Sharrer's personal papers in May 2006. The collection is rich with correspondence, lively sketches, and copious amounts of photographs used by the artist to create her work. Much of this material relates directly to Tribute to the American Working People, revealing the artist’s process. This website also includes an in-depth interview of the artist’s husband, Perez Zagorin, with exhibition organizer Laura Orgon MacCarthy.
The Archives of American Art wishes to thank the Smithsonian American Art Museum for their generous loan of Tribute to the American Working People for this exhibition.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Man seated in chair and woman posing as if hanging clothes on a line, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
Esther and John McKenzie, who owned the building at 130 Bank Street in New York City’s West Village where Sharrer was a lodger, posed for In the Parlor. Esther, pretending to hang clothes on the line, is the woman at the center of the painting.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Boy holding drawing, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
This young boy, wearing an aviator cap and holding up a drawing for all to see, directly confronts the viewer with his stark gaze. Sharrer transferred this same stare into the Public School panel.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Two children, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
To paint this boy on horseback holding a freshly-killed rabbit, Sharrer asked children on the street near her New York City apartment to pose for her.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Man with hat and pipe, ca. 1948
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
With his buttoned-up shirt, hat and jacket, this gentleman is dressed in his Sunday best. Sharrer noted, “Most people, when I asked them to pose, wanted naturally to abandon their gingham aprons, get out of their run-over bedroom slippers and take off their hair curlers.”
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Laborer outside, ca. 1948
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
Sharrer took over 400 documentary photographs and made numerous sketches in the preparatory stages of this painting. This was necessary, in her words, “to authenticate the people.” Sharrer painted this man in meticulous detail: the overalls, cap, and glasses are rendered almost exactly as they are in the source photograph.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Man in chair smoking pipe, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
John McKenzie, another neighbor of Sharrer’s, is the figure in the rocking chair, puffing on a pipe. Sharrer posed neighbors and friends, and photographed them with her 35mm Rolleiflex camera.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Woman laborer, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
Sharrer photographed this country woman sniffing her apron and painted her into Farm Scene. In the painting, the figure is completely detached from the rest of the figures (as they are from each other) and looks out of the picture plane.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Young woman outdoors leaning on shelving, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
About this photograph, the artist said: “This is also a study for the figure of the girl leaning on the chicken brooder…in this photograph I came closer to the thin grace that I wanted.” Similar photographs of other individuals in the same pose also found in the collection show that Sharrer was searching for a particular quality in the people she photographed—she kept looking, and photographing, until the precise quality she required for the painting was found.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Profile of a man smoking, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
This man, who looks directly out of the picture plane, was also photographed by Sharrer, at a factory near Amherst, Massachusetts.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Young man sitting in a chair, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
To attain the perfect pose for the teenage boy in In the Parlor, Sharrer had her husband, Perez Zagorin, dress in casual clothes and assume various positions. Using Perez as a model became part of the artist’s creative process for many years to come.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Central figure of the Tribute to the American Working People, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
Bill McIntosh, of Amherst, Massachusetts, was not a factory worked but rather the local tailor and grocer. Sharrer photographed him time and time again. Of him she said, “He never really understood why I thought his face was interesting. His keen eyes weighed my sophisticated curiosity.”
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Back view of man with a cap, ca. 1947
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
This figure has his back to the viewer, in a relaxed stance. Another photograph taken by Sharrer at a factory near Amherst, Massachusetts.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. School teacher, ca. 1945
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
The lengths Sharrer went to prepare for the polyptych—traveling the countryside near her home, posing and photographing her family and friends, and dutifully combing magazines and newspapers for source material—became her modus operandi throughout her career. Years later, Sharrer wrote about this photograph: "This woman is posing for the teacher in the Public School Scene. To find the right woman, I waited outside the Dollar Store in Amherst, Mass.—and by and by she sauntered out. I used this woman's curled hair in a net and one of her hands, but her face was too understanding. What I wanted was a face that would represent the gap between the children's imaginative and fluid ways and a teacher's dyed-in-the-wool character. The limitation of her artistic nature is represented in the painting by the Victorian, hand-painted vase. She is nevertheless very kind to the children."
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. A boy seated in a chair, ca. 1945
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
This boy, who is presumably in “time out,” was photographed by Sharrer and used in the corner of the Public School.
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Source material for Tribute to the American Working People. Schoolchildren, ca. 1945
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
This photograph of two young girls embracing was unmistakably the inspiration for the pair in the school scene of the polyptych. Sharrer explains this in her own words in the caption that accompanies the photograph, revealing that she had to try different pairs of children in order to get the “right feeling.”
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Ammunition, published by the UAW-CIO, 1957 June
Creator: AFL-CIO
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Honoré Sharrer in her studio, 1951 Apr. 4
Creator: Yale Joel
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Honoré Sharrer outdoors, ca. 1947
Creator: Perez Zagorin
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Notes for the polyptych Tribute to the American Working People , 1944-1950
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Dorothy Canning Miller, New York, N.Y. letter to Honoré Sharrer, New York, N.Y., 1945 Sept. 13
Creator: Dorothy Canning Miller
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Honoré Sharrer, New York, N.Y. letter to Honoré Sachs, 1950 Apr. 14
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Honoré Sharrer, ca. 1955
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Lincoln Kirstein, New York, N.Y. letter to Honor? Sharrer, New York, N.Y., 1953 May 17
Creator: Lincoln Edward Kirstein
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Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People
Fellowship application for the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, c. 1948
Creator: Honoré Desmond Sharrer
