WPA Art Inventory Project

Robert Wakeman was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on October 26, 1889. He attended the Yale School of Fine Arts. He was a member of the National Arts Club and the Silvermine Guild of Artists, and he exhibited across the country. For Norwalk’s tercentenary, he created a commemorative coin for the Norwalk Historical Society. Prior to the WPA Federal Arts Project, he worked for the Public Works of Art Project. Under the WPA, he completed 30 works for the Index of American Design. Wakeman died on December 16, 1964, in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; Obituary, New York Times,December 17, 1964; Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters (1986), p. 984; Who Was Who in American Art (1985), p. 653.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Robert Wakeman:

All that is known about Blanche Waterbury is that she worked for the WPA Art Project in 1936, and that she was living in Wilton, Connecticut at the time. She may have worked for the Index of American Design since she painted four renderings of a hall lantern in watercolor.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; Ancestry.com.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Blanche Waterbury:

James Wieland was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1872. His father was a sash-factory foreman. Before he began studying art, Wieland worked as a newspaper man, an illustrator, and in advertising. He studied at the National Academy of Design and at the Art Students League, both in New York City, and then at academies in Munich and Paris. Although he painted landscapes and skyscapes, he became a leading portrait painter in Connecticut, painting some of the state’s most prominent citizens and officials. For the WPA Federal Arts Project from 1936-1939, Wieland painted ten portraits including State Librarians James Hammond Trumbull, Charles J. Hoadley, and George S. Godard; and Judges Oliver Ellsworth, Samuel O. Prentice, and John Duane Park. These represent a small group of the many portraits he produced. He was a member of Salmagundi Club, the Allied Artists of America, Provincetown Art Association, Brooklyn Society of Artists, Lyme Art Association, and the Society of Independent Artists. Weiland lived in Lyme, Connecticut and in 1937 told a reporter for the New Haven Register that “there isn’t any better place in the world for the mature artist to live than on a farm in Lyme.” His later years were not without disaster. In the Hartford Courant of July 1, 1966, an article reported that Weiland’s studio in Lyme burned as a result of a fire started by lightning. At the age of 90, Weiland learned that many of his landscape and portrait paintings had burned. He died two years later in 1968.

Sources:  WPA Artist’s Work Card; AskART; Who’s Who in American Art (1985), p. 666; Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters (1986) 1005; Mary Sayre Haverstock, et al, Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: A Biographical Dictionary (2000). 3 vols. Volume 3, pp. 919-920; “Lyme Artist and Some of His Portraits,” New Haven Register, August 1, 1937; Social Security Death Index; Materials sent by the Lyme Historical Society to the Museum of Connecticut History in 1988.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from James Weiland:

Oliver Ellsworth:
Judge Samuel Prentice:
George S. Godard:
James Hammond Trumbull:
Charles Hoadley:
Judge John Duane Park:
Judge L.P. Waldo Marvin:
Judge Hinman:
Judge Milton A. Shumway:
Judge Hohn W. Banks:
Judge Torrene:

Nothing is known about Frederick Weiss except that he worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project in 1936 and painted 30 water colors for the Index of American Design. However, the only photograph of his art is of a screen painting. He lived in Stamford while employed by the WPA.

Source:  WPA Artist’s Work Card.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Frederick Weiss:

In 1936 Howard Weld was transferred from the Public Works of Art Project to the WPA Federal Arts Project. He finished 18 plates for the Index of American Design. The dates of Weld’s birth and death are unknown.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; Erwin Christensen, The Index of American Design (1950), p. 156-157, 205.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Howard Weld:

Maria Weniger was born in Bevensen, Germany in 1880. She studied art in Munich. She was a member of the Art Alliance of America. She lived in New York City and then moved to Silvermine, in New Canaan, Connecticut. Weniger worked under the Public Works of Art Project and then completed one work under the WPA Federal Arts Project, a carved mahogany sculpture of a football player. Her date of death is unknown.

Sources: Who Was Who in American Art (1985), p. 670; Fielding’s Dictionary of American Art (1986), p. 1012; “Here and There-Silvermine, Connecticut,” New York Times, July 26, 1936.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Maria Weniger:

George West worked with Edward Benoit lettering and painting signs for East Rock and West Rock Parks near New Haven using larcoloid, an acrylic latex gloss enamel applied to primed metal surfaces. The signs were directional placed along nature trails; textual describing the life cycle, behavior, and habitats of birds, insects, mammals, and vegetation and explaining natural processed like the creation of boulders during the Ice Age; and representational providing paintings of animals and plants described. West completed nine signs for the East Rock Park and seven for West Rock in 1935. Nothing else is known about him.

Source:  WPA Artist’s Work Card.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from George West:

Rodney Woodson was born in Baldwin, Louisiana on July 6, 1895. He attended public schools in San Antonio, Texas; Oyster Bay, New York; and Norwalk, Connecticut; and high schools in New York City, Oyster Bay, and Meriden, Connecticut. He moved to Connecticut in 1909. Woodson studied art under Ms. Temple of Oyster Bay, and Ms. Lila C. Yale in Meriden. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Yale School of Fine Arts and studied art in Paris. Woodson won the John Ferguson Weir Scholarship in 1920 and the Beaux Art Medals in 1919, 1922, and 1923. At the time he worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project he was living in West Haven, Connecticut. He completed 31 watercolors and oils under the WPA. Woodson’s date of death is unknown.

Source: WPA Biography.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Rodney Woodson:

Little is known about Frederick Wright. He worked for the FAP in 1938 and his residence on the Work Card is East Hartland, CT. The Social Security Death Index lists Frederick Wright whose last known residence was East Hartland as having been born in 1893 and date of death as October 1971. Wright completed six easels for the FAP, four of which were rejected in February 1940. Of the remaining two, one easel entitled In the Pequots Country was allocated to the Uncas on Thames Sanatorium in Norwich. Another which was not allocated was entitled Berkshire Hills. A 1947 article in the New York Times listed a Frederick Wright as one of a number of artists and architects producing models for an exhibition at the Mortimer Leavitt Gallery entitled, Integration of the Arts.”

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; SSDI; H. D., “The Arts Integrated,” New York Times, November 9, 1947

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Frederick Wright: