1941
February 28: Neel is terminated once again
from the WPA.
March 19: Reassigned to WPA.
September 3: Birth of Neel’s and
Brody’s son, Hartley Stockton Neel.
Fall: Moves to 10 East 107 Street in
Spanish Harlem.
October 14: A letter from the Federal Works
Agency, a branch of the WPA, notifies Neel that an appointment
has been made for her with Miss Grace Gosselin, Director of the
East Side House, explaining that there is ‘a solution for
the older youngster to be placed at Winifred Wheeler Day
Nursery, where you will teach’ (Neel Archives). Neel will
teach painting at the school for two years.
1942
November: Moves with Richard and Hartley to
a third-floor apartment at 21 East 108 Street, between Fifth
Avenue and Madison Avenue in Spanish Harlem, where she will
live and work for the next twenty years. The apartment features
a large living room with two windows that face south and look
out onto the street; this is where Neel will do most of her
painting.
1943
The WPA is terminated by Congress, and Neel
begins to collect public assistance, which she will continue to
do until the mid-1950s.
1944
March 6-22: Exhibits twenty-four paintings
in a solo exhibition at Rose Fried’s New York gallery,
Pinacotheca. A review in ArtNews reports:
Neel’s paintings at Pinacotheca have
a kind of deliberate hideousness which make them hard to take
even for persons who admire her creative independence ... Nor
does the intentional gaucherie of her figures lend them added
expression. However, this is plainly serious, thoughtful work
and in the one instance of The Walk, it comes off extremely well.
April 17: Life magazine, in an article titled ‘End of WPA
Art’, reports that Henry C. Roberts, a bric-a-brac
dealer, bought WPA paintings from a Long Island junk dealer who
had obtained them for four cents a pound. Neel’s painting
New York Factory Buildings is illustrated. She is able to buy back a few of
her paintings from Roberts. s
1946
May 3: Neel’s father dies at the age
eighty-two.
1948
Fall: Participates in the art fair of the
Rudolf Steiner School, where both her sons are enrolled on full
scholarships, by offering her services as portrait painter to
the winner of a raffle. Neel will participate in this annual
fund-raising fair until 1959, according to school newsletters.
1949
May: Illustrates Phillip Bonosky’s
short story ‘The Wishing Well’, published in the
journal Masses and Mainstream, whose contributing editors include Mike Gold,
Phillip Bonosky, Paul Robeson, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Neel had
met Bonosky, a reporter for the Daily
Worker, the previous year.
December: ‘The Martyr: A Courtroom
Sketch by Alice Neel’ is published in Masses and Mainstream.
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Neel with her son, Hartley c.1942
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Hartley in the foreground at the Winifred
Wheeler Day Nursery c.1943
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Alice Neel, Relief
Cut, 1950, ink on paper. The figures
are Hartley and a neighbor, Mancie, and her daughter. Mancie
often baby-sat for the two boys when Neel was busy
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Neel c.1943
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Neel with her two young sons, Richard,
left, and Hartley, 1946
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