Analysis of "Chance Meeting" by Martin Lewis "Chance Meeting" is a dry point etching print by Martin Lewis and was created in the early 1930"s. The subjects are two figures, male and female, who have happened upon each other in the setting of a public sidewalk at the entrance of a storefront. It may be a dichotomy in terms to call the piece, Idealized Urban Realism, though Lewis" work does harmonize well with the Urban Realist movement surfacing in this period with artists such as Edward Hopper. It also has a very idealized and stylistic quality not unlike the work...
actually represents the same couple we see in the foreground, now further down the road, or further along in time. The two are now engaged in the rituals of becoming more intimate. The road itself can be seen as a symbol of the path of fate for these two characters, as it vanishes off of the picture plane into the uncertainty of the future. Contradictory to most Urban Realist works, "Chance meeting" seems to present a rather idealized and innocent view of the era, yet aesthetically, it is a fairly realistic portrait of urban city life in America"s 1930"s.