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Pay Day

1938
(American, 1913–1997)
America
linocut
Image: 20.3 x 15.1 cm (8 x 5 15/16 in.); Sheet: 26.9 x 21.9 cm (10 9/16 x 8 5/8 in.)
The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust 2022.251
Catalogue raisonné: Teller 10
Edition: edition of 20
Impression: 16
Location: not on view
This artwork is known to be under copyright.

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Did You Know?

The composition seen here seems to have been especially meaningful to William E. Smith, who realized it a second time in reverse three years later.

Description

William E. Smith moved to Cleveland as a boy in 1926 and spent the next two decades working there. He experimented with printmaking at Karamu House, a community art center founded in 1915. Around 1919, the organization began to offer classes in linocut, which Smith favored for its affordability and democracy. In prints like this one, he sought to express the joys and struggles of Black life. Here, he depicted, in his words, “the pride and joy that every man has when he has drawn, and feels he has well earned, his pay check . . . a boy who spread his happiness all over the place when he drew his first pay from his first job.”
Pay Day

Pay Day

1938

William E. Smith

(American, 1913–1997)
America

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