1927 was a significant year for both Wylie and Noble Curry. At this time, my grandfather had moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio after working for several years at the D.L. Auld Company in Columbus. My great uncle Noble and his wife and first child, Georgeanne, also lived in the Cleveland area. In 1927, Noble's second child, Daniel, was born. He was now father to two children, and Wylie was father to three.
Neither brother created very many artworks featuring their family members, but Noble did a number of portraits of his wife Margaret ("Peggy"), and when Daniel was a few years old, ca. 1931, Noble did this etching of his wife reading to their son.
Once the stock market crash of 1929 occurred and the Great Depression began to take hold, American Home Builders, where Noble had worked for several years as a bookkeeper, folded. During the years that followed, Noble worked on his art at home, but not much sold. The family moved several times during this period, with some of the apartments having studio space for Noble, but not all. Peggy was a hard-working wife and mother, sometimes working two jobs in order to insure that the family's needs were met. Throughout their marriage, she was supportive of Noble's deep calling to being an artist. She understood this, and her understanding allowed Noble to follow this path without undue worry about consistent wage-earning on his part. During the Depression years, Peggy baked bread to sell, and also did sewing for customers.
1927 was a year of heartbreaking loss for Wylie Curry and his wife Mabel. The daughter they adored, their first-born child named Jean, died of liver disease at the age of 12 years, 11 months. I will feature my aunt Jean in a later installment. As I mentioned at the beginning of this family history project, she was the subject of one of Wylie's best portraits. And because I have very little of my grandfather's artwork to incorporate within these posts, I will hold off on publishing the portrait of Jean for the time being. Noble's family members have generously sent many images of Noble's work to me, so I will be including as many of these as possible.
I don't know where my grandfather worked at the time of Jean's death. I only recently learned that his previous employer, the D.L. Auld Co., where he designed medals, insignias and jewelry, was in Columbus, and not Cleveland. When the Depression hit, times were very difficult for many Ohio residents. According to the web site for Ohio History Central:
The Great Depression especially hurt Ohioans. In Ohio, by 1933, more than forty percent of factory workers and sixty-seven percent of construction workers were unemployed. Approximately fifty percent of industrial workers in Cleveland and eighty percent in Toledo were unemployed. In 1932, Ohio's unemployment rate for all residents reached 37.3 percent. Industrial workers who retained their jobs usually faced reduced hours and wages. These people had a difficult time supporting their families. Many of Ohio's city residents moved to the countryside, where they hoped to grow enough food to feed their families.
My father told me that to help put food on the table, my grandmother took in ironing. It was humiliating to my father to have to deliver by bicycle the freshly ironed clothes to the customers. My grandfather continued to do commercial art for whatever company brought him to Cleveland from Columbus, but he was paid erratically and never in full for the work he did. Eventually, he would take a job with a different employer named Du Gar, at which time the steady income resumed.
For both artists, then, the early 1930's were difficult and uncertain as they were for so many citizens of Ohio and the nation as a whole. The two brothers and their wives figured out ways to survive through their artwork and other creative means. Noble's third child, Mary, was born in 1931. Later in the decade, Noble would create hundreds of artworks for the Works Progress Administration (the WPA). This prolific period would lead him to become an "extremely contemporary artist," as the Cleveland Plain Dealer would call him some years later. I will write about this in my next installment.
The etching shown below is in the keeping of Noble's daughter, Mary (Curry) Shirley.
One of five landscape etchings known to have been done by Noble Curry in the 1930's. He would soon tend toward successively more abstract paintings and prints. (My apologies for the glare in the frame glass.)
My thanks to the family members of Noble Wilbur Curry for supplying images of his artwork and details of his life. Please do write to me with corrections and additions to these writings. If any other readers of this family history know the whereabouts of any artworks by either brother, we in their families would like to hear from you.
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