Fifth Avenue at Night
Medium
graphite
Dimensions
sight size: 24.8 x 32.8 cm (9 3/4 x 12 15/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1943.3.1596
Art Historical Context
Visitors to the National Gallery of Art are invited to experience the electric pulse of 1920s New York through Sir Muirhead Bone'sFifth Avenue at Night*1923). This intimate graphite drawing (24.8 x 32.8 cm) depicts the famed boulevard bathed in nocturnal glow, with towering buildings and bustling streets evoking the Roaring Twenties' glamour. Bone, a distinguished Scottish artist knighted for his World War I service as an official war artist, was for his precise, atmospheric renderings of architecture and urban landscapes, blending British topographical tradition with modern vitality. Created...
About the Artist
Sir Muirhead Bone
Sir Muirhead Bone (1876–1953), born David Muirhead Bone in Partick, Glasgow, to a journalist father and descended from a family of printers, showed early artistic promise. Apprenticed at fourteen first as a porcelain painter and then as an architect's draughtsman for four years, he honed his draughtsmanship while attending evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art under teachers Archibald Kay a...