The date of this work is an estimate based on other drawings that Indiana produced in 1945, the year he attended figure-drawing classes on Saturdays at Indianapolis’s John Herron Art Institute. His drawings from this time reflect the influence of American regionalist painters such as Charles Sheeler, Edward Hopper, and Reginald Marsh, and depict scenes from everyday life as well as industrial aspects of the Indianapolis landscape. Here a young man keeps warm by a fire near railroad tracks.
