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Accession #	74.207
Artist	William Anderson Coffin
Title	Saturday Night in August -- Eighth Avenue
Date	ca. 1900
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	16 1/8 × 26 in. (41 × 66 cm) frame: 22 1/8 × 31 7/8 × 3 1/4 in. (56.2 × 81 × 8.3 cm)
Inscriptions	Inscribed verso: "Saturday Night in August--Eighth Avenue Wm A Coffin"
Signed	Signed lower right: "Wm A Coffin"
Credit Line	Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Feld
Location	American Identities: Everyday Life / A Nation Divided

Curatorial Remarks:

In this nighttime street scene, William Coffin depicted throngs of pleasure seekers strolling past shop fronts along a stretch of Eighth Avenue in New York. Known for attracting diverse classes and ethnic groups, this area was decidedly less fashionable than the nearby Broadway theater district. The two most striking features of the painting—its monochromatic palette of gray tones and its reportorial realism (note such gritty details as litter in the street)—suggest that it was intended for reproduction as a black-and-white illustration in a newspaper or magazine.