The Boat
Peter Blume
American, 1906–1992
1929
An oil painting in which Peter Blume stages a stylized harbor scene—combining crisp geometric structures and intimate human figures to explore the uneasy meeting of industry and daily life.
You'd be struck by the cool, precise surfaces—the white paddlewheel steamboat and arched warehouses set against rippling cobalt water and a dramatic, billowing sky, while a small raft of simplified, quietly posed figures anchors the foreground.
Blume's work sits between Precisionism and modernist figuration, translating industrial forms into a subtly tense, poetic American scene that helped expand how artists represented modern life and labor in the interwar years.
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
20 1/8 x 24 1/8" (51.1 x 61.3 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Sam A. Lewisohn
Accession
39.1952
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
