Raphael Soyer
American, born Russia, 1899 - 1987Seamstress I, n.d.
Not on view
Lithograph on paper
Dimensions21 1/2 × 29 1/2 in. (54.6 × 74.9 cm)
Gift of Mr. Eugene I. Schuster, 1997.77.1
Born in Tombov, Russia, Raphael Soyer was brought to New York City in 1912. As children he and his twin, Moses, and younger brother, Isaac, were encouraged to draw by their parents. All three went on to become professional artists. As youths, the brothers worked in factories and sold newspapers to make a living. Raphael received his training from Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League.
Throughout his career, Raphael Soyer portrayed the daily life of New York's 14th Street and Lower East Side: Bowery bums, working girls, shoppers, dancers, seamstresses, and other "ordinary" people were his favorite subjects. Soyer also created a great number of self-portraits, perhaps more than any other American artist since Charles Wilson Peale.
These prints portray Raphael Soyer’s preoccupation with the representation of everyday life through the development of figurative images that convey natural gestures and attitudes. The lithographs were created by utilizing a transfer process wherein each image was drawn by the artist on Mylar and transferred to light sensitive plates, further corrected and developed, and then printed in either black and white or in four to six colors on Arches Cover White mold made paper.
