A black and white etching of a 1940s street corner captures New York’s menacing film noir feel

Born in Australia in 1881, Martin Lewis studied art in New Zealand and Sidney, then settled in New York City in the 1910s as a commercial artist.

But a trip to Japan in the 1920s changed his artistic direction to printmaking. “At first he worked from his Japanese sketchbooks but soon turned to scenes from American urban life,” states New Hampshire’s Currier Museum of Art.

Over the next few decades, Lewis made prints of his drypoint etchings that captured the rhythms of Gotham’s sidewalks and streets, from snow-covered brownstone stoops to shadowy corners under elevated trains to young women on the town to morning commuters hurrying to work.

“Chance Encounter,” from 1941, is a seductive dance of light and darkness. “Standing on the sidewalk in front of an old-fashioned storefront, a teenaged boy and girl lock gazes,” states the caption to this etching by the Currier Museum.

“Hands in his pockets, the boy smiles and speaks as his bobby-sox counterpart assumes a coquettish pose. Pronounced chiaroscuro (contrast of light and shadow) heightens the tension of the moment while inside the store window, pulp magazines entitled True Love and G-Man suggest romance and excitement.”

“Farther up the street, an older couple chats idly together, their sedate familiarity with one another forming an effective foil to the self-consciousness of the teens in the foreground.”

Is it an image of innocent teenage flirtation and posturing in the months before World War II, or something more menacing? It’s impossible to know what Lewis had in mind.

But the film noir atmosphere seems to tell us that something potentially dangerous is in the air at this nighttime meetup, and the possibility makes the print riveting and provocative.

[Print: Artsy]