Arnold Blanch believed “a painting is more than a decorative spot on a wall . . . picture making can help the world to become a better place to live in,” a sentiment that had a particular resonance in the late 1930s. Blanch’s The People is a prime example of Social Realist painting born of the turmoil of the Great Depression and the run up to World War II. Widely exhibited and published, the painting was first shown at the 1938 International Exhibition of Paintings at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, where it won the $500 third prize, the highest honor among all American entries. A year later, The People was selected from among 25,000 submissions for the American Art Today exhibition at the New York World’s Fair. The People depicts a family holding a copy of the Bill of Rights seeking redress in the nation’s capital, an image that in 1938 stood in stark contrast to some of the censored entries at the Carnegie exhibition from fascist Germany and Italy. One commentator reflected, Blanch “has chosen to show the poverty of some of the people who inhabit this still opulent land,” while another noted, The People was “the only work in the prize list which has its roots in the current social struggle.” Picking up on the somewhat controversial image, another critic observed, “So many American artists in this exhibition know how to paint glibly, but they have so little to say. In visiting the show, you are sure to shuffle unimpressed past nine-tenths of the pictures, arrested only by the work of artists like Ivan Le Lorraine Albright and Arnold Blanch. You may dislike their work – but you’ll be aware they are in the show.” Continuing in the same vein, another author, who characterized Blanch’s work as “brusque,” explained, “The artist appears to have a curious distaste for the people whose cause he pleads, and in this picture the figures resemble a group of actors waiting for the cue to vent the injustice of their fate. Meanwhile one can imagine the artist laying down his brushes, and saying to himself virtuously, ‘Thank God, I’m not a lyric painter.’”

In his landmark book, American Expressionism Art and Social Change 1920 - 1950, Bram Dijkstra reflects on The People, "Arnold Blanch featured the social-expressionist side of his thirties work perhaps most effectively in his contribution to the 1938 Carnegie International. People (Plate 83) presents an unidealized and not at all glamorous, but clearly lovingly crafted portrait of a group of average Americans as the bulwark of democracy. 'These are the true faces of the American people,' Blanch seems to indicate, 'they are long-suffering, hard-working, and far too trusting of their government. They have none of the folksy glamour jingoist 'America First" painters such as Thomas Hart Benton try to give them, but without them the country could not survive. It is their belief in the basic values of democracy that forces our legislators in Washington to maintain their fragile hold on decency.' In an article for the June 1935 issue of The American Magazine of Art, Ernest Brace had pointed out that Blanch felt ' that in some way he must ally his painting with the contemporary world of events and people. Painting for him cannot exist in the vacuum of art for art's sake.' His paintings, Brace emphasized, 'are American, not only in in subject-matter but in their deep understanding of the meaning and flavor of things American.' In this painting Blanch effectively caught the difference, and also the element of fearful uncertainty about the future, that made these average Americans hesitate about engaging in action that might upset the status quo. In a sense Blanch was a regionalist without any idealizing tendency, and this was to give his work credibility among the urban expressionists."