The Visit

Max Weber was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Bialystok, in modern Poland. In 1891 the Webers immigrated to Brooklyn, where Max studied art at the Pratt Institute. Between 1905 and 1908, he was in Paris, where he became one of the first Americans to fully absorb Cubism. The Visit is a Cubist domestic scene, probably depicting a courtship or a Shabbat (Sabbath) gathering—the men’s clothing and hats are typical of Jewish Orthodox dress. Weber began painting nostalgic scenes of Jewish domestic life in 1918, possibly in response to the pogroms that were then decimating entire Jewish populations in his native eastern Europe.