Old Pennsylvania Farm in Winter

Snow has blanketed this Pennsylvania farm, but Arthur Cederquist's painting shows that the farmer is not cut off from the world. A prominent row of poles carries telephone service and possibly also the relative luxury of electric power as well. Only about a quarter of Pennsylvania's farms had electricity during the early nineteen thirties, but this was far above the national average of ten percent of farms that were electrified. Railroad tracks run in the foreground. A car, which has recently driven down the snowy farm lane leaving tire tracks, is parked by the farmhouse. Cederquist was clearly proud of the modern technology serving the old but solid wooden farm buildings.

Either train or car would have brought Cederquist from his home in New York back to Pennsylvania, where he was born. Like many of the artists involved in the Public Works of Art Project, Cederquist studied art and kept a home base in New York, but his art featured his birthplace. His three paintings for the PWAP were all set in rural Pennsylvania.1934: A New Deal for Artists exhibition label