The People Work - Night

In The People Work - Night, Benton Murdoch Spruance presents several vignettes of typical nighttime activities occurring simultaneously in an urban setting: clockwise from upper left, a couple snuggles in a deserted car of an elevated train; party revelers lounge on a second-floor apartment balcony and fire escape; men gather along the bar in a neighborhood tavern or diner, outside of which two cats sniff at a garbage can; and two women pass by a group of street repairmen toiling by lamplight beneath the train tracks. This lithograph print is the fourth and final work in Spruance's series "The People Work," which also include Morning (TF 1995.47.a), Noon (TF 1995.47.b), and Evening (TF 1995.47.c). Unlike those three, which show most people moving through the city without interacting with each other, Night suggests a spirit of community as city-dwellers socialize and enjoy themselves.

 The Title Sheet Spruance created for the series (TF 1995.47), offers the following caption for this print: "Work for some, others pleasure bent—tomorrow it begins again. A Paradise?" This print and the others in the series collectively provide a sobering composite glimpse of the routines revolving around work—and occasional snatched pleasures—that filled the lives of ordinary American city-dwellers during the 1930s as they struggled against the economic strictures of the Great Depression. Other artists, such as Fritz Eichenberg in his City Lights (TF 1996.17), also pictured ordinary Americans at play in the city in that era.

Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940 (Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains 1840–1940), Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 15–May 25, 2003; Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 8–August 17, 2003. [exh. cat.]

Expanded Galleries of American Art with Loans from the Terra Foundation for American Art Collection, [Gallery 163] The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, April 15–July 2005.

 Terra Collection-in-Residence, Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, United Kingdom, September 15, 2022–September 30, 2026.

 

Adams, Clinton. American Lithographers 1900–1960: The Artists and their Printers. Albuquerque, New Mexico: The University of New Mexico Press, 1983. Ill. pp. 115–16.

Fine, Ruth E. and Robert F. Looney. The Prints of Benton Murdoch Spruance. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. No. 144, p. 111.

Master Prints of Five Centuries: The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection. (exh. cat., The Detroit Institute of Arts). Detroit, Michigan: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1990. No. 109, pp. 120–21.

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text pp. 22, 30 (checklist); ill. p. 53 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text pp. 22, 30 (checklist); ill. p. 53 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]