PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
months, beginning in December 1933. At the close of the trial period in the spring of 1934, Maril’s work was selected for inclusion in a special exhibition held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Figure 17: Sketch of Old Baltimore Waterfront, 1934, oil on fiberboard, 18⅛ x 14¼", Courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum, transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor
Duncan Phillips. Phillips was an enthusiastic admirer and soon thereafter purchased several of Maril’s works, which he exhibited in The Phillips Gallery. One day those paintings were spotted by Edward Rowan, assistant director of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first of the New Deal assistance programs initiated by the federal government to aid artists during the Depression. It was at Rowan’s suggestion that Maril applied for a PWAP assignment. In 1934, with the assistance of Roland McKinney, then director of the Baltimore Museum of Art and a member of the PWAP regional committee, he was commissioned to execute a painting that he titled Sketch of Old Baltimore Waterfront (fig. 17).3 The PWAP was an experimental program approved by Congress for a period of only six 26
In his PWAP work, Maril’s style underwent remarkable changes. Although the compositional geometry remained simplified and clearly structured and all forms depicted were boldly and summarily executed with all unnecessary clutter and embellishment eliminated, a conscious concern for deep spatial recession appeared. Dependence on contemporary models significantly diminished. Both the thematic and the stylistic changes conspicuously evident in Baltimore Waterfront typify the pronounced reaction against the prevalent contemporary European aesthetic doctrine of the time and reflect the growing isolationist spirit that was overtaking many facets of life and art in America. From that standpoint, Maril’s Baltimore Waterfront, now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, conformed well to what was regarded as the “American scene,” the desired stylistic criterion for PWAP eligibility. In fact, a review of the Corcoran Gallery exhibition, included in the final report submitted to Federal Emergency Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins when the PWAP was disbanded in 1934, expressed much satisfaction that the works demonstrated that “ . . . the American artist has become more interested in the life of his own people and the aspect of his own country than he ever was in the past.”4 Maril’s Baltimore Waterfront and several other works executed by him in the mid-1930s exemplify the conservative American scene movement, which remained popular throughout much of the Depression. Yet Maril’s work was not typically American scenist; it didn’t express nostalgic or moralistic qualities as many other American scene artists’ work did. At this time, Maril began receiving widespread recognition. He felt deep concern for the working classes and the desperate social conditions under which they lived, yet he was not strongly leftist in his political persuasion. Nevertheless, he became a member of the Artists’ Union and was periodically recognized in the pages of the short-lived journal Art Front, sponsored by the union. He was also the subject of an article written by the artist and critic Olin Dows and published in the July 1935 issue of the more conservative