Vanity II: Jacob and the Angel

A seminal figure in twentieth-century graphic arts, Benton Spruance did much to elevate printmaking's status. Sprunace won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy in 1925, where he was awarded the prestigious Cresson Travel Scholarship two years in a row. He was first introduced to lithography in 1928 while in Paris on the first scholarship, and over the course of his lifetime Spruance broadened the possibilities of the medium, particularly in the use of color. A native Philadelphian, Spruance was an idealist and activist crucial to the city's mid-century renaissance, notably a program whereby one percent of the cost of a public building is allocated for art. Spruance was also a gifted instructor of both studio practice and art history who taught widely in Philadelphia. Spruance's ethical concerns meshed particularly well with lithography, long established as a forum for political and satirical messages, and he was committed to creating art that, while personal and expressive, communicated a message. He frequently turned to mythological, religious, and biblical themes in his work, as in this image, the first of his depictions of Jacob wrestling an angel (Genesis 32:22-32), a theme and composition he revisited in 1952 and 1956. One in a series of five biblical images from the "Vanities II" series, "Jacob and the Angel" illustrates Spruance's deep admiration for William Blake, as well as several of his technical innovations in color lithography.