An American Oriental dates from the first years of du Bois’s mature period and consequently is not completely characteristic of his later work. It was originally exhibited as New York Oriental, the term Oriental referring to a dark, exotic woman. The woman in this painting is not one of the fashionably dressed ladies du Bois usually depicted in his typical mature paintings but is a common, urban gypsy. In contrast to the two flappers depicted in Shops, 1922 (LACMA; q.v.), who also stand before a black, wrought-iron fence on a city street, this Oriental brazenly confronts the viewer with her direct gaze and open, frontal pose. Du Bois was a master of modern design. He conceived the Oriental as dark, shadowy, and fully modeled in contrast to the flat, brilliant orange brick wall she stands before and the gleaming white steps nearby. The scene is a slightly asymmetrical arrangement of three simplified areas of color held together by the iron fence. The woman’s head is slightly cropped by the top of the canvas. In the late nineteenth century this compositional device became synonymous with contemporaneity; it does not, however, appear in du Bois’s other paintings. The brick wall and adjoining door are painted in the highly saturated hues that became the hallmark of his paintings from the 1920s.

The early twentieth century witnessed the transformation of the United States into a modern industrialized society and an international political power. By 1920 more than half of the country’s population lived in urban areas. Seeming to guarantee employment, the cities lured many farmers and African Americans from rural areas. In addition, between 1900 and 1920, 14.5 million immigrants from Europe, Russia, Mexico, and Asia settled here, primarily in urban centers. A new energy was channeled to such cities as New York and Chicago, as massive skyscrapers were erected to furnish much-needed office space and living quarters. Even West Coast cities were affected—the population of Los Angeles tripled between 1900 and 1910; its unplanned urban sprawl and dizzying speed were captured in the zany movies of the Keystone Cops, filmed on the streets of the city.

Art reflected these changing social and economic dynamics. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism were still popular. Yet other, more progressive ideas now challenged artists. A strong new commitment to realism emerged in literature and the fine arts.

In Philadelphia and New York, a group of artists centered around Robert Henri captured the vitality of urban American life. These realists depicted the hustle and bustle of city streets, the common pleasures of restaurants and various forms of entertainment. Critics dubbed these realists the “Ash Can School” because of their treatment of unidealized subject matter previously considered unattractive. These artists focused on the inhabitants of cities rather than the cities themselves. Their interest in people also led them to create a significant number of single-figure paintings, conveying the human side of the new America . During the 1910s and 1920s the realist celebration of America spread throughout the country, as artists recorded the neighborhoods and people that made their own cities distinct.

 

An art critic as well as a painter, Guy Du Bois was the son of the noted critic Henri Pene De Bois and was at ease in literary and artistic circles. He recorded the Roaring Twenties by focusing on attractive young people and their chic clothes and lifestyle. As a student of Robert Henri he was thus following his teacher’s insistence that he should depict his own era and environment. But in An American Oriental he practiced a more stringent, ashcan-school approach. The figure is not one of Du Bois’s typical sleek modern figures, but a more curvaceous, earthy type. The term “Oriental” at that time could refer to a member of numerous foreign ethnic groups; here it identifies the subject as one of the many recent immigrants to the United States. Her black hair, wide dark eyes, and full lips suggest that she might be an Italian, a Jew, or a Gypsy. Her plain blouse and skirt confirm her status as a working-class woman. Du Bois presents her in a confrontational manner and on a larger scale than his usual figures. Her hands clutch the railing behind her, so that nothing obstructs our view of her body. Staring out at the viewer she seems far from shy or reticent. Du Bois has cropped her head at the top of the canvas, a compositional device used by the impressionists to convey the immediacy of contemporary life. Attitudes toward immigrants varied, but the artist seems to suggest that these new Americans could not be ignored.