Crawford Notch, New Hampshire

Israel Litwak was born in Odessa, then part of Russia. He emigrated to the United States in 1903, settling in Brooklyn and working as a cabinetmaker. He began to paint after retiring at age sixty-eight. Litwak recorded the urban scene as well as place visited on vacations such as the subject shown here. Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire had often been celebrated by nineteenth-century, but Litwak's image is very much his own invention. "One achieves good painting by imagination, talent, patience and a lot of hard work," he wrote. "I look . . . just to get an idea; then I go home and make it the I want it, not the way it is."