During the years of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt's New Deal broadcasted the need for national recovery and rejuvenation. This plan was in part fulfilled by establishing the Works Project Administration (WPA), a program that employed over 10,000 artists. In addition to simply offering employment to artists, this government-run agency promoted art as an essential part of society, deeming it intergral in rebuilding a nation during the time of grave crisis. Of the types of government commissions that grew out of the WPA, the mural was, for the artist, the most important public means of distilling and disseminating the necessary historical and contemporary themes and ideals asked of him.

Louis Wolchonok was such a muralist working under the WPA. Unfortunately, not much is known about the artist; yet, the present work, as well as lots 198 and 199, offer three poignant examples of murals and their importance to American history and art from the 1930s. These works were most likely designs submitted by the artist for regional mural competitions; and, since artists entered their works anonymously, these are not signed. Wolchonok worked in the preferred style of contemporary realism or American scene painting which extracted vignettes of contemporary life set within local environs--the type of subject matter that most often won commissions. Each of Wolchonok's mural designs focuses on a particular aspect of the community in question. He infuses these with a sense of optomistic vitality. Through these images, Wolchonok shows the citizens of Stoughton, Massachusetts, celebrating their nation's independence; farmers in Selbyville, Delaware, reaping the bounty of a fruitful land; and laborers of Mannington, West Virginia, intergral to flourishing industry.....all during a time of economic catastrophe.