|'Evening News' (1914) by Francis Luis Mora; James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown|
Today's painter, Francis Luis Mora, is American, but Uruguayan by birth, and was born on 27 July 1874 as the son of the famed Spanish painter and sculptor Domingo Mora. His youth was full of art and he studied under his father before he got an art education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Art Students League in New York. After his formal education, which he finished at the age of 19, he travelled to Europe. In Spain he got inspired and influenced by the great Spanish old masters like Diego Velázquez, El Greco and Goya. He found the subjects of his paintings on the streets of the American city and was drawn to painting people on public transportation. I like this painting 'Evening News' very much. Two women sitting amongst four men on the New York subway. They are all dressed for business and one of the women is reading the paper like she wants to keep up with the news just like the men. The other woman is looking the viewer straight in the eye. She is not holding a newspaper but a cane. I wonder what she's thinking.