AFA Winter 2017

Winter 76 www.afamag.com |  www.incollect.com right Fig. 11 : Edward Loper (1916–2011), Mae Mafco, ca. 1940. Oil on canvas, 37½ x 22 inches. Museum purchase (2007.4); Side table, 1865–1900, by “Big Tom” Burton (n.d.), Long Neck, Sussex County, Del. Walnut, unidentified root. Museum purchase (2009.4). Photo by Andrew Dalton. Always a great advocate of American illustration, the museum features one of the largest collections of the works of Frank E. Schoonover, as previously noted; the collection has recently expanded to include work by newly discovered figures, including works by the enigmatic William D. White (1896–1971). The Night Shift on Broad Street (Fig. 10), is the artist’s masterpiece. An illustration for a Hercules Corporation trade magazine, the image represents one of the earliest paintings in Delaware to incorporate realist subject matter of the working classes and people of color. Surprisingly, the artist’s socially conscious images graced the pages of a publication designed to increase sales of industrial chemicals. The recognition of gaps in the museum’s collections have prompted the design of a lecture series by outside scholars to highlight new opportunities for the museum from populations of color, religious groups, visitors of different abilities, women, and the LGBTQ community. Among a few early examples of these new directions is a small table that dates to the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Fig. 11). According to family tradition, the table was created by an African American sharecropper named “Big Tom” Burton who farmed on the Burton Plantation in Sussex County, Delaware. The painting above it, Mae Mafco (ca. 1940), was painted by Edward Loper (1916–2011), an African-American modernist who started his career as an illustrator in Wilmington for the Index of American Design during the Great Depression. He later studied aesthetics at the Barnes Foundation and received an honorary doctorate for his artistic accomplishments. In its first ten years, Mr. Biggs opened and nurtured a small American art museum with a teaching collection that reflected important early artforms of Delaware. In its next 15 years, the museum’s staff and trustees cultivated his foundation to build one of the finest regional art museums in the country. An exhibition celebrating the museum, At 25: Distinguishing the Biggs Museum of American Art , will feature the new accessions illustrating this article and debuting the museum’s new acquisition, a recently conserved Robert Henri oil sketch. The exhibition will be on view during the 54th Annual Delaware Antiques Show in Wilmington, Del., from November 10-12, 2017.  Ryan Grover is curator of the Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, Delaware. 1. James Biser Whisker, Pennsylvania Clockmakers, Watchmakers, and Allied Crafts (Cranbury, N.J.: Adams Brown Co., 1990). 2. Both copies of the receipt are at the Biggs Museum of American Art. The original receipt is currently unaccounted for within the family who donated the chairs. 3. Two chairs have been gifted and two are currently promised gifts of the descendants of Vincent Loockerman. 4. The Biggs Museum owns one side chair of this set, inscribed with Randolph’s name and the partially obscured date of 1762 or 1765. left Fig. 10 : William D. White (1896–1971), The Night Shift on Broad Street, ca. 1926. Oil on canvas, ca. 38 x 32 inches. Promised gift of Nancy Carol Willis.