George Biddle (AM 1885 -1973) � Mother�s Day � Lithograph, 1928, 10 x 13 �, ed. 50, signed, titled, numbered and dated in pencil. This piece is in excellent condition. One of the Artist�s masterpieces.

Collections: Brooklyn Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art

In 1928 Biddle accompanied Diego Rivera on a sketching trip through Mexico. Impressed by the passion and the political and social awareness of the Mexican muralists, Biddle decided to devote his own art to the contemporary American scene and to paint the social, economic, and political issues facing America. A one-man exhibition of Biddle's Mexican works was held at the Frank Rehn Gallery, his dealer until 1939, in New York in 1929. In 1933 Biddle proposed his idea of a government-sponsored mural program similar to the one he witnessed in Mexico to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After many meetings with Roosevelt and other government officials, the Federal Arts Program was implemented.

In 1930 George and Ira Gershwin commissioned George Biddle to illustrate the libretto for Porgy and Bess. The artist spent May and June in Charleston, where he produced a large folio of drawings of the local people involved in everyday activities from which the illustrations for the libretto of Porgy and Bess were selected. Paintings created from the Charleston sketches were exhibited at the Downtown Gallery, New York. Biddle's second marriage to Jane Belo ended in 1929 and in 1931 he married the Belgian sculptress H�l�ne Sardeau. The couple spent a year in Rome working on oils, drawings, lithographs, and ceramics. They returned in 1932 to the home Biddle had built in Croton-on-Hudson.