Woman's Proper Sphere is the Home
Illustration for The Masses, January, 1913
Offset lithography

Extended loan from Lydia Chappell

Like many of the other talented artists who worked for The Masses, Becker was influenced by the mud-splashed journalistic immediacy of the Ashcan school. He studied with both Robert Henri and John Sloan, who also contributed to the magazine . His political cartoons and his darkly raw sketches of urban lowlife still have revelatory force. The criticism of hypocritical Victorian images of women in this cartoon is as scathing as the satire of George Bernard Shaw, while also possessing something of Shaw's belief in the strength of women. The overburdened woman has a look that is both knowing and undefeated. Is her baby a strangely gleeful optimist?