The People Work: Portfolio cover and Title Sheet

This title sheet was published to accompany the four lithographs that comprised Benton Murdoch Spruance's print series "The People Work," which was issued in a portfolio in an edition of forty. Henri Marceau, who wrote the explanatory text, was Curator of Paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the artist's hometown, at the time Spruance made the series.

After Spruance made his first lithograph in 1928 during a study trip to Paris, lithography became his primary creative medium. During the 1930s, the artist executed over one hundred individual prints and earned national acclaim for his graphic talents. The People Work, his first series, ranks among his best works; it also serves as a telling depiction of American life. Spruance printed the lithographs in collaboration with Theodore Cuno, a master printer in Philadelphia. In 1937, when this remarkable series was first exhibited, it was awarded the Joseph Pennell Memorial Medal by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where Spruance had studied.