This painting came to the museum with no title but has been called The Wanderer because of its subject matter. The image of the Wandering Jew in art dates back several centuries and took on many levels of meaning, often referring to a person on the fringes of or outside of society. Sigall, who may have been Jewish, might have intended this elderly man to allude to his own emigrations. However, the wanderer was quite an appropriate subject during the Great Depression, during which thousands of people were displaced, some of them forced to live as hobos. In this painting Sigall has presented in quite sympathetic terms an old man who stops to rest and contemplate his situation. A tear stands on his eyelid. Although the background does not seem to be the depiction of a specific locale, the remnants of the front page of a Los Angeles Times in the immediate foreground place the wanderer in the Southern California area. The picture’s somewhat piecemeal nature gives it a rather naïve quality, but Sigall’s meticulously detailed rendering and application of paint in a tempera technique suggest that he was trained in traditional old master methods. Such realistic depiction accords with the revival of Renaissance art that was occurring in American painting at the time. Whether Sigall encountered such art through studies in Europe, South America, or the United States is not known.

Four years after the stock market crash of 1929, which triggered the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated the New Deal, a program of domestic reform meant to revive the economy and alleviate the problem of mass unemployment. Toward these ends, he established various new federal agencies, putting many more people to work to do the increased business of government. Thousands of artists were employed, most through the largest program, the Works Progress Administration. Although the government did not dictate the type of art that was to be produced, it did encourage the use of a representational style and American themes. As a result, most of the art created in the decade prior to World War II was humanistic in orientation.

Artists, writers, and philosophers of the period became obsessed with the social relevance of art. Although a small group of American artists did attack the societal ills of the nation (housing shortages, unemployment) and of the world in general (the rise of fascism and militarism), most adopted a more pragmatic and even positive attitude. American scene painters captured busy city dwellers on streets, in buses, at work, and at play. Occasionally artists infused an element of humor into the pathos of everyday existence, even in scenes that allude to the political disasters of the day. Regionalists were particularly fond of idealizing the past and aggrandizing the present accomplishments of the country. In fact, the myth of America as a country where everyone lives a pastoral, carefree existence emerged with new vigor in the art of the 1930s.

The diversity of the people also emerged as a strong current of social realism. Artists who were accustomed to working in their studios now looked beyond their immediate circles for models. Individuals of various races, professions, or creeds inspired some of the most moving portraits of the century and demonstrated the soul of the people.