Untitled c. 19th century

William B. Closson made this engraving, sometime around the turn of the 20th century. It depicts a barber attending to a seated man, while another figure reclines nearby, perhaps waiting his turn. Closson specialized in wood engravings for book illustrations. In America, the late 19th century was a time when new printing technologies made art more widely available. Here, the artist is using those technologies to depict a scene of everyday life in what appears to be the Middle East or North Africa. The image's strong contrasts and crisp details create a sense of immediacy, but they also reflect a Western gaze, exoticizing the scene for an American audience. The engraving's formal qualities and subject matter point to the complex relationship between art, commerce, and cultural exchange at the turn of the century. To understand this relationship better, one might research the publishing industry, the history of Orientalism in American art, or the artist's own biography.