George Benjamin Luks (American, 1867–1933). Street Scene (Hester Street), 1905. Oil on canvas, 25 13/16 x 35 7/8 in. (65.5 x 91.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 40.339 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 40.339_PS20.jpg)
George Benjamin Luks (American, 1867–1933). Street Scene (Hester Street), 1905. Oil on canvas, 25 13/16 x 35 7/8 in. (65.5 x 91.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 40.339 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 40.339_framed_PS20.jpg)
Street Scene (Hester Street)
George Benjamin Luks
American Art
On View: American Art Galleries, 5th Floor, From Colonies to States, 1660–1830
In this scene capturing a crowded pushcart market on Hester Street on New York’s Lower East Side, George Benjamin Luks positions the viewer directly at street level and in close proximity to the array of men, women, and children who throng the foreground. Although the painting has been interpreted as a sympathetic vignette of Jewish life, it shows a closer kinship to Luks’s colleague Robert Henri’s method of representing people as racial or ethnic “types” rather than as specific individuals (see nearby work). Here, the figures are presented in profile, with particular attention to skin color and physical features, while the subject matter relates to a series of caricatures of Jewish peddlers—which engage with anti-Semitic stereotypes—that Luks created for Truth magazine in the 1890s.
MEDIUM
Oil on canvas
DATES
1905
DIMENSIONS
25 13/16 x 35 7/8 in. (65.5 x 91.1 cm)
frame: 32 1/2 x 43 x 3 in. (82.6 x 109.2 x 7.6 cm) (show scale)
SIGNATURE
Signed lower right: "George Luks"
COLLECTIONS
American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
40.339
CREDIT LINE
Dick S. Ramsay Fund
EXHIBITIONS
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is on view in American Art Galleries, 5th Floor, From Colonies to States, 1660–1830
CAPTION
George Benjamin Luks (American, 1867–1933). Street Scene (Hester Street), 1905. Oil on canvas, 25 13/16 x 35 7/8 in. (65.5 x 91.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 40.339 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 40.339_PS20.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 40.339_PS20.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2024
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