Marble Players

Artist

Allan Rohan Crite (American 1910–2007)

Date

1938

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

29 15/16 x 35 1/16 in. (76 x 89 cm)

Description

Considering himself an “artist-reporter,” Allan Crite began painting daily life in his own neighborhood in Boston in the 1930s. He consciously avoided the stereotypical images of African Americans dominant in contemporary visual arts, instead depicting his neighbors as ordinary people in quotidian circumstances, busy in the quintessentially American life of work and family. While many of his images assume a straightforward “documentary” approach, Crite painted his subjects, particularly mothers and children, with a distinct reverence that endowed many of his pictures with an almost religious quality. In Marble Players, Crite rendered the children as abstract forms with few details of dress and facial expression, but their energy and lively movements are all the more palpable for it.

Credit Line

Gift of the artist, 1971

Object Number

UR74