Sinopia for the "Roosevelt Mural"
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
The sinopia is the original underpainting of the fresco by Ben Shahn for the school and community center of the Jersey Homesteads. The Jersey Homestead was a government subsidized planned community developed for textile workers under the Farm Security Administration.
The fresco is one of Shahn's most important works because of its overarching association with the Socialists ideals the community embraced and because it expresses his Jewish emigre heritage , his activity in political, social, and artistic issues, and his highly personal painting style and technique. Although he did not consider it to be one of his most successful works and came to develop a less crowded and more direct style in painting murals, the painting unquestionably achieves mural painting's goals of narration. It tells the story of the arrival of Jewish emigres at Ellis Island; of the working circumstances of the textile industry in NYC; the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the precipitation of the IGWU (International Garment Workers Union) under union leaders; and finally the formation of the Jersey Homesteads.
The sinopia was separated from the fresco and backed during the conservation treatment by noted Italian conservator Ottorino Nonfarmale in the 1960s. As a sketch of the final fresco composition necessary for executing such a monumental painting, it demonstrated the artist's creative process and working methods.
Using traditional practice, Shahn executed the sketch on the rough plaster layer, or arriccio with brown and reddish brown paints. Microscopical analysis indicates that the browns and reds are iron oxides; the red is probably burnt sienna; and the brown is probably burn umber. He laid out the area to be plastered with the final smoother plaster, or intonaco, with green and blue paints. If the plan was followed, each of these areas, or giornata (a day's work) which respond to natural divisions in the composition, would have been covered with the intonaco and painted in fresco. If parts of the final painting were not sucessful, Shahn wuold have cut them away, replastered the area, and repainted it in Fresco.
Reflecting the experience he gained from working with Diego Rivera, Shahn executed the mural in fresco technique, the practice of applying pigments to without media to damp lime plaster, to which they become bonded during the process of drying. Shahn used the early Renaissance practice of laying out the mural with a sinopia, a cartoon executed in fresco on the rough plaster layer (the arriccio). Typical of the classical applications of the technique, he used iron oxide pigments for the sinopia, such as burnt sienna and umbers. He also laid out the contours of the giornate with a green pigment.
- The sinopia is the original underpainting of the fresco by Ben Shahn for the school and community center of the Jersey Homesteads. The Jersey Homestead was a government subsidized planned community developed for textile workers under the Farm Security Administration.
The fresco is one of Shahn's most important works because of its overarching association with the Socialists ideals the community embraced and because it expresses his Jewish emigre heritage , his activity in political, social, and artistic issues, and his highly personal painting style and technique. Although he did not consider it to be one of his most successful works and came to develop a less crowded and more direct style in painting murals, the painting unquestionably achieves mural painting's goals of narration. It tells the story of the arrival of Jewish emigres at Ellis Island; of the working circumstances of the textile industry in NYC; the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the precipitation of the IGWU (International Garment Workers Union) under union leaders; and finally the formation of the Jersey Homesteads.
The sinopia was separated from the fresco and backed during the conservation treatment by noted Italian conservator Ottorino Nonfarmale in the 1960s. As a sketch of the final fresco composition necessary for executing such a monumental painting, it demonstrated the artist's creative process and working methods
Using traditional practice, Shahn executed the sketch on the rough plaster layer, or arriccio with brown and reddish brown paints. Microscopical analysis indicates that the browns and reds are iron oxides; the red is probably burnt sienna; and the brown is probably burn umber. He laid out the area to be plastered with the final smoother plaster, or intonaco, with green and blue paints. If the plan was followed, each of these areas, or giornata (a day's work) which respond to natural divisions in the composition, would have been covered with the intonaco and painted in fresco. If parts of the final painting were not sucessful, Shahn wuold have cut them away, replastered the area, and repainted it in Fresco.
Reflecting the experience he gained from working with Diego Rivera, Shahn executed the mural in fresco technique, the practice of applying pigments to without media to damp lime plaster, to which they become bonded during the process of drying. Shahn used the early Renaissance practice of laying out the mural with a sinopia, a cartoon executed in fresco on the rough plaster layer (the arriccio). Typical of the classical applications of the technique, he used iron oxide pigments for the sinopia, such as burnt sienna and umbers. He also laid out the contours of the giornate with a green pigment.
