Street Scene (Hester Street)
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Object Label
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.
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) frame: 32 1/2 x 43 x 3 in. (82.6 x 109.2 x 7.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 40.339. No known copyright restrictions (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 40.339_PS20.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Street Scene (Hester Street)
Date
1905
Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
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)
Signatures
Signed lower right: "George Luks"
Credit Line
Dick S. Ramsay Fund
Accession Number
40.339
Rights
No known copyright restrictions
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Frequent Art Questions
Do have any information about the toy the man in the top hat is holding up?
The man you have honed in on appears to be entertaining the surrounding children with a marionette-like puppet. The puppet or toy may even have been for sale from one of the pushcarts like the one you can see in the foreground full of flowers. Many turn-of-the-century residents of the Lower East Side made their living selling goods this way.In the early 20th century (George Benjamin Luks painted Hester Street in 1905), street performers were a popular form of entertainment in urban areas like Hester Street in Lower Manhattan. Luks and his fellow members of the Ashcan School were interested in portraying the realities of New York City life.
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