Street Fight

Inscriptions

Signed, lower left: jared french; signed and inscribed, by artist, on reverse: Jared french 54 Morton St. NYC (crossed out) 5 St. Luke's Pl. NYC / "Street Fight"

Label

The memory of a place can vary depending on one’s experience and perspective. While many artists celebrated the glowing vibrancy of New York’s cityscape, Jared French focuses here on its darker side, depicting a scene of violence in a working-class neighborhood. Although the cause of the fight is unclear, French’s homosexual identity may have shaped his attention to the vulnerability of certain subjects and society’s indifference to their suffering. He rendered these figures with dramatic gestures and Renaissance-inspired colors, heightening the tragedy and intensity of the moment. The smiling face of a woman in a background advertisement creates a stark contrast with the action that is underway.

From the 2026 exhibition Nurturing Nationhood: Artistic Constructions of America, 1790-1940, curated by Haely Chang (Jane and Raphael Bernstein Associate Curator of East Asian Art), Evonne Fuselier (Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow), Michael Hartman (former Jonathan Little Cohen Curator of American Art), Elizabeth Rice Mattison (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art), and Ashley B. Offill (Curator of Collections)

Course History

ANTH 12.3, WGST 42.5, The Ethnography of Violence, Chelsey Kivland, Fall 2013

ARTH 17, The Power of Place: Urban and Rural Images in American Art, 1900-1945, Sarah Powers, Winter 2014

ARTH 71, The "American Century": Modern Art in the United States, Mary Coffey, Winter 2015

ARTH 71, The "American Century": Modern Art in the United States. Mary Coffey, Winter 2015

SART 31, Painting II, Thomas Ferrara, Spring 2019

Art History 40.02, The American Century, Mary Coffey, Spring 2025

Art History 40.02, The American Century, Mary Coffey, Spring 2025

Exhibition History

14th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., March 24-May 5, 1935.

46th Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, October 22-December 8, 1935.

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Paintings from the Dartmouth Collection, 1910-1960, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 17-April 12, 1998.

Carpenter Gallery, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 1981-May 1982.

Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, February 16, 2016-June 30, 2018.

Jared French Retrospective, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, September 15-December 15, 1992.

Nurturing Nationhood: Artistic Constructions of America, 1790-1940, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; February 7-August 29, 2026.

Picturing New York: Images of the City, 1890-1955, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 31-June 21, 1992.

Publication History

Barbara MacAdam, "Picturing New York: Images of the City,1890-1955", Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1992, no.22.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 90, no. 66.

Cole, Mark Patrick. “Jared French (1905-1988).” PhD diss. University of Delaware, 1999, fig. 64, pgs. 195-197.

Provenance

Ilse Martha Bischoff, Hartland, Vermont; given to present collection, 1950.

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