Quarter of Nine - Saturday's Children 1929

Martin Lewis made this print, Quarter of Nine - Saturday's Children, using drypoint, a kind of engraving. Look at how he has created these dense, dark areas using hatching. You can almost feel the process, the repetitive work of the hand, building up these moody tones. The surface is so rich, the blacks feel velvety, like charcoal. Then there are the sharp, decisive lines that give structure to the scene. I'm drawn to the way the light hits the street. See the long shadows stretching out from the figures? It's as if the city is breathing, the street alive with movement and energy. Those tiny marks create such atmosphere! This reminds me a bit of Whistler, who also found beauty in the urban landscape, or maybe Edward Hopper, who was another great painter of city life. Art is really just artists talking to one another across time, in different languages. What Lewis has captured here is not just a place, but a feeling, and that feeling can mean different things to all of us.