Painting the Town.

The article focuses on the painters in New York City. Lisbeth Firmin, a painter in a storefront studio in a small town in New York, use to paint the city's street scenes. Firmin shows her work at Michael Ingbar Gallery, where painting and photography by a number of artists with an affinity for architecture is displayed. Ironically, Firmin and most of her coevals tend to remove the masses of people from their paintings, focusing more on mood and structures, whether anonymous dwellings, instantly recognizable landmarks or the formidable skyline. These painters are part of a multifaceted tradition that flowered a century ago when Ashcan School artists like John Sloan limned quotidian life on the Lower East Side and Childe Hassam delighted in celebratory flags fluttering from the facades of fashionable Fifth Avenue. New York's bridges have been a theme of perpetual fascination for painters.