The Art Lover
Can I see it?
Yes, on view now
Where is “The Art Lover” now? Harvard Art Museums, Gallery 1320, floor 1, Modern and Contemporary Art, Cambridge. Yes, on view now. Checked September 29, 2026.
On public display.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
An admirer of 19th-century French artist Honoré Daumier’s social caricatures, Mervin Jules satirizes the myopic gaze of a bourgeois connoisseur scrutinizing a painting. The painting-within-a-painting depicts workers demonstrating against the backdrop of a smoke-filled industrial landscape. The subject memorializes the infamous 1937 Little Steel strike, during which police fired on unarmed unionized steelworkers and their sympathizers protesting low wages and poor working conditions. Jules executed this painting during a formative time when he was studying with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League and employed by the silkscreen unit of the Works Progress Administration.
Harvard Art Museums
Details
- Accession number
- 2005.114
In the catalog
Sources
- Harvard Art Museums
- Image: Harvard Art Museums — © President and Fellows of Harvard College
