The Butcher Shop

Maker Alexander Zerdin Kruse (American, 1890 - 1972)

Collections

American Paintings Selections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Dateca. 1940

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 30 × 25 in. (76.2 × 63.5 cm.) frame: 36 × 31 1/4 × 1 1/4 in. (91.4 × 79.4 × 3.2 cm.)

InscribedInscription signed in lower right: AZ Kruse

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of the Kruse Family Trust

Status

Not on view

Label TextAlexander Kruse depicted a kosher Jewish butcher shop and the predominantly immigrant population it served with dignity and understanding. While paintings and popular illustrations of New York's Lower East Side at the time tended to focus on its poverty and overcrowded conditions, Kruse instead presented a clean, tidy business with well-dressed and orderly patrons. Kruse was born to Jewish immigrants and raised in the neighborhood depicted in The Butcher Shop, which may account for his sensitive treatment of the subject.
George Luks discovered Kruse sketching on the streets of New York at age 10. Kruse subsequently studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, where he associated with Luks and other Ashcan School artists such as Robert Henri and John Sloan. Sloan included a portrait of Kruse in his McSorley's Cats, which hangs in this room.

Bibliography

All Consuming

Object number97.12.1