Description:
woman standing in profile on fire escape looking at city skyline
Label Text:
Hauntingly still, Martin Lewis's depiction of New York City at night is reminiscent both of Edward Hopper's ominously dark views and John Sloan's lively interest in the city and its people. Lewis, a lifelong realist, is indeed often seen in relation to Sloan and the American Scene painters. He also had a life long friendship with Hopper and appears to have been subtly influenced by Hopper's own perception of the city-it was Lewis, in fact, who taught Hopper the art of etching. Lewis began producing prints in 1915 and achieved the zenith of his success in the 1920s before the Depression and the growing interest in abstraction left him in relative obscurity by the time he died in 1962. He was most interested in the city's perpetual activity, and in the tonal rendering of space and light. Lewis' compositions are highly controlled and, as in this drypoint, make use of a diagonal receding of space juxtaposed with strong planar forms in the foreground, often backlit with silhouettes of figures or facades. In Glow of the City, Lewis draws us into the composition with the gaze of the woman over the brownstone roofs crisscrossed with clotheslines to the ethereal, glowing, almost living light of the distant skyscraper. The control Lewis had of his medium and composition is evident, as well as his intense interest in the effects of light. Lewis, like Sloan, was less interested in portraying social conditions, although in this print a mournful, yet also compellingly beautiful depiction of the city speaks powerfully to the human condition.
Subjects:
drypoints (prints) Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1976.54.437 |
