Breakfast

In William Gropper's domestic Breakfast a bearded man, barefoot and in his nightshirt, sits at a dark kitchen table set for his breakfast meal. One leg tucked underneath his body, he leans his head on one hand and stares toward the viewer with a somewhat grim yet abstracted expression, as if not yet fully awake. In the background, clothes hang on a clothesline; a crowded tenement dwelling is further suggested by the pot resting on the stove at the right, the undersized window in the background, and the discarded slippers on the floor at lower right. The setting recalls the artist's origins in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood on New York City's Lower East Side and his life in the Bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village. Indeed, some observers have suggested that Breakfast is a self-portrait, a suggestion borne out by the figure's intense, moody gaze. In contrast to such works as Coffee Break (TF 2004.8) and Nude on a Wicker Chair (TF 2004.15), Breakfast details the figure's setting, creating a context and suggesting a narrative.

  In 1965, at the suggestion of Sylvan Cole, head of Associated American Artists, a New York gallery, Gropper returned to the medium of etching, in which he had worked earlier in his career, to make a series of etchings in which he could explore figural subjects independent of social and political commentary. Eager to experiment with various intaglio methods, he worked in collaboration with New York-based master printer Emiliano Sorini, whose "ES" chop mark appears on this impression.

Sorini, Emiliano. Gropper - Catalogue Raisonné of the Etchings. San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1998. No. 74 (first version), p. 74.