Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
The Black Boys
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Neel made this painting of two young boys—Toby and Jeff Neal—when she moved to her studio/home in the Upper West Side. She frames the sitters between a fireplace in the background and a round wooden table in the foreground, upon which one of the sitters leans wearily. Revisiting the compositional pairing of siblings seen earlier in Two Girls, Spanish Harlem, also in this exhibition, here the boys drift apart slightly, each cupping his face in his hand as they regard the artist with a mixture of boredom and curiosity.