Untitled (City by Day) c. 1930

This is a print of a city by H. Paulson Legg. It's made of bold black and white shapes and lines. You can see the Empire State building, tall and strong. It's interesting to think about how Legg chose what to show and what to leave out, what to ink and what to leave blank. You can really feel the artist's hand here, carefully carving away at the block. I wonder if they were thinking about precision and order, or maybe just the chaos of city life. Those strong diagonal lines shooting across the sky feel like energy or light. Maybe Legg was trying to capture the feeling of a new day, a city buzzing with possibility. It's a bit like Hopper, but with more optimism, perhaps? Artists are always in conversation with each other. And so, this print gives us a way of seeing the city, filtered through Legg's imagination, inviting us to bring our own experiences to it.