According to the US Department of Labor, it’s possible that
Labor Day began with one Peter J. McGuire, leader of the
Brotherhood of Carpenters, who advocated a day to honor workers
“who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we
behold.” The same might be said of artists. This Labor Day, you
can visit LACMA for free and, while you’re here, see images of
workers through the ages. Winslow Homer’s Cotton Pickers (1876)
depicts women working in a cotton field, silhouetted against the
sky. He painted them at a tenuous moment in American history, as
African Americans struggled to claim the right to control their
own labor where slavery had recently flourished. Homer depicts
the two women as monumental and majestic, the figure on the
right looking into the distance with a resolute expression. It’s
a powerful portrait of labor and determination. From the Spanish
colonial period, we get The Twelve Months of the Year, hanging
in our Latin American galleries. Painted in the latter half of
the seventeent