Richard Estes' Crosstown Bus illustrates the artist's ability to manipulate the compositions captured by his camera and play with perspective in order to arrive at a painting faithful to his vision of the city. Estes's artistic practice focuses on documenting the world around him in photographs, which he then translates into paintings. Although revered as the foremost exponent of photorealism, Estes can more accurately be described as a photo-derived painter instrumental in pioneering the use of photography not as a final destination but as a wellspring of data for his artistic process.

In a night-time scene, Crosstown Bus depicts a view reflected on and seen through a window of the 34th street crosstown bus. Another through line of Estes' work remains the artist's playful dialogue with his viewers, whether tasked with unraveling a painting's multitude of angles and perspectives, identifying a familiar street corner, or searching for his hidden signature—which appears here on the facade of a storefront below the window at the center-right of the composition.