Man with a wheelbarrow
In this lively sketch, a pipe-smoking laborer stands guard over his wheelbarrow full of goods, seemingly in a tense standoff with a hunched, intense figure leaning over a wooden railing. F.O.C. Darley was a giant of 19th-century American illustration, often called the first native-born American artist to gain fame, known for capturing the gritty reality of literary characters. The loose, scribbly lines and dramatic shading give the scene a sense of immediacy, as if we’ve just stumbled upon a candid, perhaps illicit, negotiation on a city street.