From a Brooklyn Window 1939

Alan Horton Crane made this lithograph, "From a Brooklyn Window," with ink and a printmaking stone, sometime in the mid-20th century. It’s an image built from the smallest marks, tiny hatching and cross-hatching, to build up tones and create this amazing feeling of depth. The whole thing feels built, block by block, echoing the buildings it represents. Look at the top right, the rounded building with its many windows. The light catches the edges of each little window frame. It's so precise, but the feeling it creates is dreamlike. And is that a figure looking out of one of the windows in the midground? It's hard to tell, and the lack of detail only adds to the mystery. This reminds me a bit of Charles Sheeler’s precisionist paintings, but with a more human touch, a softer edge. It’s like Crane is showing us the city, not as a cold, modern machine, but as a place where people live, dream, and look out of windows.