Lewis’s paintings, like those of many Abstract Expressionists, straddle the boundary between abstraction and figuration. The predominantly dark palette of this work evokes the nocturnal cityscape of the title; the delicate lines that crisscross the surface have been interpreted as laundry lines or power lines. In City Night Lewis has transformed this quotidian subject matter into an atmospheric and luminous abstraction. “The elements of painting constitute a language in themselves,” the artist wrote in 1949; the dynamic interplay of light and dark in City Night demonstrates his deft control over the medium.
Andrew Wyeth painted the landscape, objects, and residents of only two places: his lifelong home village of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the area around the neighboring coastal villages of Port Clyde and South Cushing, Maine, where he spent summers. Anna Christina Olson, who appears in this and many of his other paintings, was Wyeth’s neighbor in Maine. A neuromuscular disease had left her unable to walk. When he saw her dragging herself home one day across her family’s yard, he was inspired to make a painting conveying her indomitableness. He did this by combining direct observation with imagination. While he faithfully depicted her fragile arms and hands, for example, he replaced her family’s small yard with a vast field. “Christina’s world is, because of her physical handicap, outwardly limited—but in this painting I tried to convey how unlimited it really is,” he once wrote.
Painter and printmaker Edward Hopper produced closely observed urban views, landscapes (largely of New England), and interior scenes—all either devoid of or sparsely populated by people. Though he insisted that his paintings were straightforward representations of the real world, their overall sparseness imbues them with a sense of loneliness, estrangement, and stillness. Light, whether from electric bulbs or the sun, defines the places he depicts and shapes the mood of his works. A late afternoon glow pervades House by the Railroad, which features a grand Victorian home fronted by the tracks of a railroad. Beautiful Tidbits