According to the art historian Irma B. Jaffe, he was "one of the major American painters who refused to reject the image, [and] has devoted his career to depicting the human condition with a warmth tempered only by honesty".
Early in his career he came under the influence of the French Impressionists, but was soon drawn to the American realists of the Ashcan School painters, whose work led him directly to the study of urban life.
During the 1930s his social realist paintings had an anecdotal quality in their description of everyday incidents of the working class, depicting the grit of city life – docks, laborers, vendors, Lower East Side streets.
Exemplifying this style is the series of paintings done in 1957 for "Life" magazine in connection with an article on Green Haven, a New York state prison.
A watercolor painting from that series entitled, "The Family" is held by the Art and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.