"Self-Portrait on the Levee", 1934, multi-stage on canvas, verso: bears stamps on stretcher from "Arts and Crafts Club, New Orleans" and "Boyer Galleries, Inc., Broad Street Station Building, Philadelphia, Penna", with partial label from Delgado Art Museum, Exhibition card from New Orleans Museum of Art's 1975 McCrady Retrospective, 22 1/2 in. x 31 in. see color illustration. As NOMA's Retrospective Catalogue chronicles: The Self-Portrait I did was the result of kidding I got while in New York studying. My Mississippi drawl attracted attention and the students had a lot of fun with me. They accused me of being a Southern aristocrat with lots of Negroes to wait on me, so I thought I would carry on the joke and painted myself lying on the levee with a little Negro boy fanning me and another bringing me an armload of beer. (J.McC., "Biographical Notes") Painted soon after the artist's return to New Orleans, the work was exhibited in the 1935 Philadelphia Show, "Thirty-Five Painters of the Deep South": His self-portrait is perhaps the triumph of the show. It reveals the artist lying on his back, his legs raised and sprawled, the magnificent laziness of this attitude being amplified by the presence of a young Negro, busily fanning the artist and protecting him from the sun by an umbrella. Beyond there is a stretch of river, upon which an old-fashioned steamboat is glimpsed. The foreshortened figure and the painting of the nearby feet in almost gigantic proportions, give to his portrait an honesty, in which few self-delineators would care to indulge. McCrady is the best of the contributors. (Philadelphia Inquirer, MARCH 24, 1935) John McCrady 1911-1968, the catalogue of the New Orleans Museum of Art's 1975 Retrospective, by Keith Marshall, p. 36 Painting above illustrated Plate 2, p. 36. Photo below fig. 6, p. 17. NOTE The consensus of many art historians is that the five most important McCrady paintings are: "Swing Low Sweet Chariot", "Heaven Bound", "The Shooting of Huey Long", "Judgment Day", and "Self-Portrait on the Levee". This is the only one of the top five McCradys currently available: three are in museum collections, and one is in a private collection where it is likely to remain.