William Perine Hicks (Jr.)

August 24, 1895 - August 10, 1955, aged 59

William "Bill" Perine Hicks (Jr.) was a painter, etcher, lithographer, animator, and medical illustrator. His mark on culture was his artistic output with the WPA/FAP program - Works Progress Administration / Federal Art Project - a U.S. government endeavor enabling artists to make work during the Great Depression. This program ran from 1935 to 1943, ending as the U.S. ramped up involvement in World War II.

Hicks was born in Brooklyn, NY to city employee William Perine Hicks, Sr. (then 38 years old) and Philomina Rosenberger Hicks (then 21) and was the second of nine children. At the age of twelve, Bill was on his own and taught himself Greek, Latin, calculus, and art. Of Quaker heritage, he volunteered for the American Expeditionary Force in World War I as a medic and served in the trenches without a weapon. Between 1917 and 1919 he was in active service with the Corp. 311th Ambulance Co., 78th Division in Arras, Limey, St. Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne, France. Some of his later etchings of French scenes are taken from drawings and photographs he took while there.

Returning home, he married Mabel Anna Elizabeth Johnson on May 24, 1920. Between 1921 and circa 1940 they had five children, though their fourth died a toddler. The family lived a pauper lifestyle in a converted beachfront chicken coop on the shore of Jamaica Bay in Canarsie, Brooklyn, while it is said that Bill worked on his artwork at night and went skinny dipping with his bohemian friends during the day. One of these more notable friends was Joe Gould, a well-known character in the Greenwich Village and Provincetown social and creative scenes. Family lore also has Bill connected as a friend to the more famous artist Charles Demuth.

As an animator Bill worked for Paul Terry and Fable Pictures, and Max Fleischer. He was also a freelance artist doing commercial art cartoons and caricatures. His most productive period of time was during the Depression era when he worked for the New York chapter of the aforementioned WPA, and produced most of his paintings, etchings, and lithographs. He exhibited widely in various painting and printmaking exhibitions throughout the east coast, and was involved with the American Veterans Society of Artists - at one time serving as its president.

During World War II he worked as a medical illustrator for the Army Medical Corp sketching anatomical drawings. After a debilitating illness (possibly including dementia) and an extended stay in a VA hospital, William Hicks died at home in Canarsie in 1955. He is buried in Long Island National Cemetery, East Farmingdale, New York.

As a result of his work with the WPA, his prints were displayed in many hospitals, schools, and other public institutions throughout the New York area. Whether these artworks are still hanging around or are in storage or long dispersed remains to be researched. This creative output is, though, represented by a large assortment of his prints in the stores of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Other entities with Bill's work include the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Binghamton University Art Museum, the Provincetown Art Museum, and the Library of Congress.

Find a ‘slideshow’ of photographs below. Further expanded and identified soon…