Bela de Tirefort was born in Eastern Europe, painted in New York City, and retired to St. Petersburg, Florida. Known for his striking New York scenes, de Tirefort left an enduring record of the metropolis between the 1930s and ’50s. Using muted tones, strong silhouettes, and incisive textures, his paintings capture the structure of the city in the decades between the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the growth of the New York art scene. He often depicted the areas surrounding the Flatiron Building, Broadway, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the New York Harbor and sold many of his paintings directly from Washington Square.