The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 18, 2025

Vertically oriented print in brown tones of a woman with medium skin tone from the shoulders up, facing us, in front of a brown background. Her face is relaxed, lips curving up into a faint smile. She wears a white, collared coat with a white band rising to a point adorned with a bow pulling back her hair. Fine, cross-hatch lines and a speckled brown create a grainy texture.

Anna

c. 1940

Charles L. Sallée

(American, 1911–2006)
America
etching and aquatint
Plate: 24.5 x 19.8 cm (9 5/8 x 7 13/16 in.); Sheet: 30.5 x 25.5 cm (12 x 10 1/16 in.)
Gift of John Puskas 1994.274
© The Estate of Charles L. Sallée
Catalogue raisonné: Salsbury, Benay, and Kruse 70 (as Martha)
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Charles Sallée also made a print of Anna drawing in a class at Karamu House.

Description

Here, Charles Sallée depicted a fellow artist from Karamu’s studio art program. He described knowing her from classes and admiring her “curious, inquiring quality.” Sallée noted that this print was made through the WPA, or Works Progress Administration, a federally funded program that supported artists during the financial strife of the Great Depression. Sallée frequented Cleveland’s WPA graphic arts workshop, where he experimented with aquatint, the technique used for grainy areas of tone in the background and in Anna’s skin and hair. This process was popular at the workshop, with some participants even inventing their own variations.
  • Glaubinger, Jane. "A Salute to Sallee." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 46, no. 6 (March 2006): 8-10. Reproduced: p. 8 archive.org
    Benay, Erin. "Peripheral Prints: Karamu House and the Rise of African American Art in the Midwest." Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 10, no. 1 (Spring 2024). Mentioned and reproduced: fig. 4 journalpanorama.org
    Salsbury, Britany, and Erin E. Benay. Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2025. Reproduced: p. 94, no. 45
  • Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 23-August 17, 2025).
    The Cleveland Museum of Art (1/26/2014 - 5/18/2014); "Our Stories: African American Prints and Drawings"
  • {{cite web|title=Anna|url=false|author=Charles L. Sallée|year=c. 1940|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1994.274