A black-and-white print of a people warming their hands over a fire at the end of a long line of people in a city with a stylized backdrop of skyscrapers.

Bread Line New York

Clare Leighton (1898-1989)

Date

1932
Object Type

Prints
Medium

Wood engraving
Dimensions

Image: 12 x 8 in.
Sheet: 16 7/8 x 10 3/4 in.
Edition

35/100
Inscriptions

Recto:
l.l. beneath image, in graphite: 35/100 Bread Line New York
signed l.r. beneath image, in graphite: Clare Leighton
Credit Line

Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Accession Number

1985.289
Copyright

Courtesy of the Artist's Estate © Estate of Clare Leighton

Leighton established a reputation in the 1920s for woodcuts and wood engravings portraying scenes of work, typically in a rural setting. During the Great Depression, she took on the subject of urban unemployment, producing this print showing a bread line in Manhattan.

Leighton’s print adopts a view from street level, looking over the shoulders of a procession of waiting figures. Above and to the left, illuminated signs advertise unobtainable goods and services, while at the base of the image three men attempt to warm themselves over a feeble fire. Monumental skyscrapers preside over the dreary scene, gleaming in the cold winter light. Leighton’s precise cross-hatching intensifies the impersonal qualities of the image, producing shadows that rake across the backs of the figures and the surrounding architecture.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)

Location: Off view

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