Baseball+at+Night

Date: 1934
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1976/1976.146.18_2a.jpg?itok=fIWe4yCD width="392" height="309" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/baseball-at-night-12930"]] || Title: **Baseball at Night**

Artist: **Morris Kantor** Born: Minsk, Russia 1896 Died: Nyack, New York 1974

Medium: oil on linen Dimensions: 37 x 47 1/4 in. (94.0 x 120.0 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Mrs. Morris Kantor

Accession: 1976.146.18 || Stadium lighting was still rare in 1934 when artist Morris Kantor saw this night baseball game in West Nyack, New York. The artist strove to convey in his painting "the panoramic spectacle of the field, the surrounding landscape, the people, the players, and the nocturnal atmosphere." Kantor showed the field proportionately smaller than it actually was to fit all this into his painting, along with a radio booth, flags waving against the night sky, and a runner taking his lead off first base. Major league baseball would not begin night games until 1935. However, in the early thirties Minor league, Negro League, and exhibition stadiums like this one used portable or permanent lighting for night games that would draw crowds of people who worked during the day.
 * Exhibition Label: **

The Sports Centre at the Clarkstown Country Club, in West Nyack was a versatile venue that hosted baseball games played by minor league teams, barnstorming professionals, local semipro groups of firemen and policemen, and Country Club members. Catering to the Depression-era thirst for varied, affordable entertainment, the Centre also staged boxing and wrestling matches. Eccentric proprietors Pierre A. Bernard and his wife, Blanche de Vries, even maintained a herd of performing elephants.

As leisure time and sports entertainment expanded in the 19th century, American artists who shared the public's growing fascination with sports reacted by incorporating the subject into their art.


 * Suggested Questions: **
 * What is the source of light? Is it night time or day time? How do you know?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">What kinds of movement are taking place in this scene?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">What might have happened just before this scene? What might happen next?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px; line-height: 21.45px;">
 * Resources: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Eye Level: Baseball at Night <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Links: **