4x5 transparency scanned on Hasselblad Flextight X1 by Ed Pollard-2011.

Images(2)

East Main Street Looking West

Artist Kenneth Harris (American, 1904-1983)

Date1951

MediumWatercolor on paper

DimensionsOverall, Image: 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in. (50.2 x 69.9 cm)
Overall: 21 1/4 x 29 5/8 in. (54 x 75.2 cm)
Overall, Mat: 30 x 37 in. (76.2 x 94 cm)
Overall, Frame: 31 1/4 x 38 1/4 in. (79.4 x 97.2 cm)

ClassificationsModern art

Credit LineMuseum purchase, Norfolk Newspapers' Art Trust Fund

Object number51.45.7

Terms

Gray
White
Black
Red
Tan
Blue
Norfolk, VA

On View

Not on view

DescriptionThis is a watercolor on paper painting. It is one of thirty in a series titled _Portrait of a City_. In this painting, the viewer looks down a city street scene; on the right side people walk on the sidewalk - most of them wearing coats - where there are a variety of shops. On the left side, residential buildings are visible in various states of disrepair; nobody walks on that side of the street in the scene. Cars line both sides of the street.

Label TextKenneth Harris American (1904-1983) East Freemason and Fenchurch Streets, I Remember-I Remember, 1950 East Main Street Looking West, 1951 Watercolors on paper Museum purchase, Norfolk Newspapers' Art Trust Fund 51.45.10 and 51.45.7, respectively In 1950, the Chrysler's forerunner, the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, commissioned local watercolorist Kenneth Harris to create a series of topographical views of the city. Entitled Portrait of a City, Harris's thirty watercolor views of Norfolk, including the two displayed here, were purchased by the Museum in 1952 and exhibited there to great acclaim. The series depicts not only Norfolk's architectural landmarks, coal piers, and railroad yards, but also several urban neighborhoods then slated for demolition, as the city began, in 1949-50, what would become the most sweeping example of "urban renewal" in post-World War II America. East Freemason and Fenchurch Streets records what was then one of the city's oldest sections, an area of handsome 19th-century brick row houses that had fallen into disrepair. By 1954 the neighborhood was being leveled. In East Main Street Looking West, Harris portrays another section of 19th-century townhouses that had formerly been a fine residential neighborhood but by 1950 had become an economically marginal area of small shops and taverns. Most of them would be demolished by 1961. Though Harris claimed his watercolors were straightforward documents and not works of art, Portrait of a City is indeed artful and often hauntingly poetic. Harris's touch is consistently deft, his palette rich and nuanced, and his stately compositions shaped through a masterful interplay of light and atmosphere.