Mabel Dwight

One of the most notable American printmakers of the 1920s and 1930s, Mabel Dwight is best known for her satirical depictions of New York life. Deaf from birth, she first began producing prints in 1927, at the age of fifty-two, and rapidly rose to become a key member of the American Scene movement, which filled a growing demand for realistic art based on the everyday experiences of ordinary Americans. Unlike many of her contemporaries, however, Dwight limited herself exclusively to the medium of lithography, circulating her work to a broad national audience in publications such as Vanity Fair. An astute observer of the human comedy, she instilled her scenes of New Yorkers riding the subway, shopping, and visiting parks and other popular entertainments with biting humor as well as compassion.

In The Clinch, Movie Theatre, an early print, Dwight portrays one of her favorite subjects: the reactions of spectators at a public event. Here, moviegoers watch as a couple embraces in an on-screen close-up—the “clinch” of the work’s title and the conventional ending for romantic films of the period. The scene is filled with amusing details, from the engrossed audience members, who watch openmouthed and with hands clasped, to the man who is awkwardly squeezing through the row, grasping his coat and hat in his arms in such a way as to echo the action on screen. The couple in Dwight’s depiction is generic, but may have been inspired by famous on-screen pairs of the period such as Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.