Dean Ellis (New York, 1920 - 2009) "George Washington Carver" Signed upper right. Original Oil painting on Masonite. Provenance: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation. This painting is the original painting which was published on the Fleetwood Commemorative Cover for The Shapers of America series issued in 1987. Among the true heroes of American agriculture none was more creative, or more productive, than George Washington Carver. Born of slave parents in 1864, he lived all his life in freedom, but with a consciousness that his parents had been slaves and, so too, many of the Black sharecroppers of the post-war era. Carver was educated at the Iowa State Agricultural College; his work won him appointment to its faculty upon his graduation. In 1896, he was called to head up the new agricultural department at the Tuskegee Institute. It was there that he sought to improve the welfare of the Southern tenant farmers, Black and White alike. He devoted himself exclusively to research. He displayed a genius for breeding new crops. He was largely responsible for realizing the potential of the peanut. This heretofore neglected plant became, in a few years, the South's most profitable crop after cotton. From the peanut, the sweet potato and cotton, Carver developed no less than four hundred synthetic materials including dyes, soap, cheese and -- from wood shavings -- a synthetic marble. Carver even increased cotton productivity by producing a hybrid cotton -- named after him -- with much larger bolls. Throughout his distinguished career, Carver remained devoted to Tuskegee, where he not only continued productive research, but also trained a generation of agronomists. Image Size: 18 x 21 in. Overall Size: 24 x 27 in. Unframed. (B11098)