Collectors Item WPA Art License Plate "Espirito Santo Grant, Old Cuba Road" by William Penhallow Henderson

{Part of the New Mexico Foundation Community Art Plates Series.}

Add a bit of color and class to your car with New Deal Front License Plates and at the same time help NNDPA continue its good works to preserve New Mexico’s New Deal public art.

States That Allow Decorative Front Plates: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia

These colorful, decorative plates depict New Mexico scenes created by New Mexico artists during the New Deal years from 1933-1943. The selected images are part of a vast body of work completed under various New Deal Art Programs. Our beautiful plates are durable, long lasting, and printed on metal.

If you know someone in any of the 19 above states that don’t require a front license plate, why not surprise them with this special gift from the Land of Enchantment? They also make wonderful wall art or exterior placements.

* We are a 501(C)(3) Non Profit. All Proceeds go towards our efforts to preserve New Deal sites around the country and educate the public about this American history.

This mural was commissioned in 1933 under the Public Works of Art Project and completed in 1938 under Treasury Relief Art Project. It is one of six mural landscapes on canvas affixed to the walls by William Penhallow Henderson in the U.S. District Court building on Federal Place.

In 1916, after more than a decade teaching and painting in Chicago, Henderson moved to Santa Fe with his wife, the poet and editor Alice Corbin. There his interest in the Indigenous and Hispanic residents of the Southwest inspired work in several media. Best known are his pastels and oils, less so his murals, handcrafted furniture, stage designs, and innovative architectural projects. As an ilustrator, he was noted for his work on novels and scholarly studies focusing on the Southwest, including his wife’s classic, Brothers of Light: The Penitentes of the Southwest.

Henderson’s emotive, high-keyed color and decorative spatial treatment suggest Post-Impressionism applied to distinctly southwestern imagery. His work was an inspiration to avant-garde as well as conservative painters in the Southwest.

* We are a 501(C)(3) Non Profit. All Proceeds go towards our efforts to preserve New Deal sites around the country and educate the public about this American history.