The Chinese in New York – Scene in a Baxter Street Club-House
Original title: The Chinese in New York – Scene in a Baxter Street Club-House (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. XVIII)
kurzbeschreibung
For the edition of March 7, 1874, Winslow Homer made this wood engraving for Harper's Weekly, and it carries the viewer inside a Chinese club-house on Baxter Street in New York. Two men have settled comfortably on a mattress in the foreground, while several others gather around a table toward the back.
Description
Up front, one man stretches out on a bedroll with a bottle in his hand, and beside him a second reclines in much the same way. At the table deeper in the room a group has come together; cigars and a box rest on the surface, and the men are playing or talking. A large sheet covered with Chinese characters hangs on the wall, two lanterns above it, and a window lets in daylight. Tones of gray dominate the image, as was usual for wood engravings of those years.
Context
The print was drawn for Harper's Weekly, at the time one of the most important illustrated magazines in the United States. During these years Baxter Street was becoming the center of New York's Chinese community, which had settled there since the 1860s. Homer, known for his reportorial illustrations, recorded here the everyday life of an immigrant group that the American public often viewed through stereotypes. This sheet belongs to a series devoted to the life of the Chinese in New York.
Impact
The scene comes across as ordinary and quiet, observed plainly and without any exotic garnish. The clear structure of the picture and the precise rendering of the room create a documentary closeness that draws the viewer, as it were, into the establishment. Through the grays of the wood engraving, the sheet acquires a serious, almost confidential mood.
Technique
The image was executed as a wood engraving, a relief process in which the design is cut into a block of wood. Fine lines and hatching allow an exact rendering of light and shadow, which made the method well suited to reproduction in magazines. The image measures 27.6 x 23.2 cm, the sheet 40.2 x 26.9 cm.
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Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)