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Home , Bronx Museum of the Arts, Fairfield Porter, George Ault, Jerome Myers, Junius Street station, Staten Island Museum

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Junius Allen. American, 1898-1962 . British, born 1939 site in which George Washington took the oath of office for the presidency. John Quincy creates some interesting spatial effects that play with our perception of the perspectives (Henry Geldzahler, American in the 20th Century, NewYork: The Metropolitan Sons, it is located on the east side of Madison Square in . In 1912 the tallest The Old New York Post Office. 1939-40 IRT Elevated Station at Broadway and 125th Street. 1981-83 Ward's 1883 statue of Washington stands on the approximate spot where the first in the painting. The rounded globes of the public street lamps, for example, lead the eye Museum of Art, 1965, pp. 28-30). skyscraper, the tower rises 700 feet, or fifty stories above street level. Like Oil on canvas mounted on pressed board H. 36, W. 42 inches Oil on canvas H. 25, W. 4714 inches president took the oath in 1789. into the composition, while the stark white of the directional signal on the lamp in the Tammany Hall was the headquarters of the Democratic political clubs that dominated the the Con Edison building featured in John Button's Fourteenth Street: High Noon (1977), George A. Hearn Fund, 40.85 Purchase, Louis and Bessie Adler Foundation, Inc. Gift The seemingly innocuous scene is on closer examination replete with a number of dramas. center inserts a rather surrealist detail. political life of NewYork City during the first part of this century. the tower has a clock. When at night one views Manhattan from across the East River, the The old New York Post Office was situated at Broadway and Park Row. Built between (Seymour M. Klein, President), 1984.93 While the composition is remarkable in its stillness, the blur of the form in one or two illuminated profile of Metropolitan Tower dominates the skyline along with the Empire 1869 and 1878, it combined aspects of the winning plans submitted to the architectural British artist Rackstraw Downes has for several years depicted meticulously detailed pictorial episodes tells us that this work is not a still life. The animation of the slight blond Lizabeth Mitty. American, born 1952 Dennis Smith. American, 1951-1983 State, Chrysler, and Con Edison buildings. competition for the design of the building. The resulting structure was a marvel of late aerial views of Manhattan. He delights in the task of accurately recording a great woman wearing a sweater across her shoulders in the lower center of the composition BreakOut. 1982 Union Square: Hell. 1981 In his emphasis on atmospheric effects, Wiggins' work is comparable to Childe Hassam's nineteenth-century eclecticism. number of particulars—place, light, time of day, weather—on a relatively small canvas contrasts with the calm of the girl on the lower left, whose glance and expression suggest Acrylic on canvas H. 72, W. 58 inches Oil on canvas H. 45, W. 60 inches Broadway and 42nd Street (1902). Both artists relied on the stylistic conventions of the This painting by Junius Allen was completed in 1940, the same year as the building was that may take him years to finish. IRT Elevated Station at Broadway and 125th Street upheaval. The two black youths behind her are carefully posed in counterpoint to one George A. Hearn Fund, 1983.443 Purchase, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1984.203 Impressionists for their topographical views of the city, which contrasted with the works being demolished. The artist leads us into the painting as if we were one of the pedestrians measures less than four feet in width, which seems hardly large enough to contain the another in a manner that recalls the pugilist compositions of the fifteenth-century Italian One tends to associate NewYork City with tall skyscrapers and streets teeming with In 1981, when he was not quite thirty, Dennis Smith painted this picture of loneliness and of , , and , who focused on the more social and crossing Broadway on that rainy day near City Hall Park. expansive panorama presented. Downes, however, exploits this physical limitation by artist Antonio Pollaiuolo. people, but the other boroughs of the city have a distinctly residential character that despair. The scene is a public park; the time is night. Four men share his grim urban humanistic aspects of city life. Allen was born in Summit, , in 1898. Allen's use of a limited palette and his choice filling the space with myriad images. The view is 125th Street in from the far West Haney received a B.F.A. from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, and an A.F.A. from provides a ready contrast with the cityscapes of Manhattan. Lizabeth Mitty makes these setting. At the left on the raised arm of a curious seesaw sits an older figure, conventionally of climate allies his pictorial interests with those of the American Impressionist school, of Side looking east. As one studies this painting the extraordinary specificity of the artist's Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He draws on a multitude of sources and neighborhoods the focus of her art. She grew up in Flushing, Queens, during the 1950s dressed. His head is large and is shown full face. A second man squats at the opposite . American, born 1924 which the Wiggins painting, Metropolitan Tower, done nearly three decades earlier, is vision becomes apparent. He includes such details as a cloudy sky after a rainfall, still- influences, both traditional and contemporary, to forge his own statement within the and 60s when the suburban celebration in this country was at its height. end of the balance. He hides his head in a paper bag. At the right stands a third man who Playground. 1964 also an example. wet streets and rooftops, men at a construction site, a flock of white pigeons, various realist genre. Break Out is a view of houses and trees seen from the Long Island Expressway as the seems younger. He wears a vividly colored shirt. His back is turned and he appears to be Oil on canvas H. 36, W. 36 inches billboards, and landmarks such as the Harlem State Office Building at Seventh Avenue artist and her family were driving to Long Island for a Thanksgiving dinner with friends. hanging himself. Further into the park a fourth man turns his back. In the extreme distance Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert E. Carroll, 1978.225.3 Mark Baum. American, born 1903 and 125th Street. Downes' realism is influenced by modern photography, as evidenced by Childe Hassam. American, 1859-1935 Mitty notes that this fleeting vision had emotional import for her. The first sighting of walks a small white dog restrained by a leash. In the foreground, a cone wastes its Critics have evoked the names of Gainsborough and Constable when describing the Seventh Avenue and 16th Street. 1932 his awareness of peripheral vision and its attendant distortions. Broadway and 42nd Street. 1902 these residential areas just beyond the Midtown Tunnel represented liberation from the fuchsia-colored ice cream. plein-air landscapes of Jane Wilson. This study of a playground in Tompkins Square Park, Oil on canvas H. 30, W, 28 inches Oil on canvas H. 26, W. 22 inches congestion of Manhattan. Hence the title, Break Out. The location is Union Square, in the late nineteenth century a fashionable area, but until located on Manhattan's , also calls to mind the misty, atmospheric Edith C. Blum Fund, 1983.122.2 Louis Michel Eilshemius. American, 1864-1941 Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 67.187.128 recently one of the most derelict and crime-ridden of Manhattan parks. Between 1977 cityscapes of Whistler. Her gray tonalities seem appropriate visions of twentieth-century A native of Austria, Mark Baum came to NewYork City in 1919. He studied painting at the NewYork at Night, ca. 1917 Doreen Böiger Burke has written about this view of Broadway and 42nd Street: Jerome Myers. American, 1867-1940 and 1983 Smith had painted some forty pictures, and among his last were Hell and its metropolises. National Academy of Design in 1923 but left after one year to work on his own, although Oil on cardboard mounted on masonite H. 28, W. 2214 inches "Dated 1902, the painting shows a scene in New York's Times Square during an evening The Night Mission. 1906 companion piece Heaven. Wilson has long been associated with a generation of painters called "gestural he did attend the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown in the summer of 1926. Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 67.187.158 snowstorm. For Hassam the city was its best 'viewed in the early evening when just a few Oil on canvas H. 25, W. 30 1/16 inches figuralists." Under the guidance and tutelage of the critic/painter/poet Fairfield Porter, In the pamphlet for his exhibition at Perls Gallery in 1941, Baum is described as "a primitive Louis Eilshemius was influenced early in his career by the Barbizon school of painting in flickering lights are seen here and there and the city is a magical evocation of blended Rogers Fund, 12.69 Raphael Soyer. American, born 1899 these artists adopted the deft and swift brushstrokes associated with the Abstract painter who sees New York and the surrounding countryside with a feeling for charming, Paris, where he went to study in 1886. His landscapes of the Delaware Water Gap and of strength and mystery' " (New York Sun, February 13, 1913, section 4, p. 16). In his autobiography Artist in Manhattan (1940), Jerome Myers wrote this about Night Nocturne. 1935 Expressionists and adapted them to a more figurative or realist mode. Their observations poetic color and a delightful sense of humor. His lighthearted personality reflects itself in his birthplace, the New Jersey countryside, are bathed in warm sunlight reminiscent of Here black carriages and darkly dressed figures are crowded in the middle ground Mission: "The tent was pitched on a slip near the East River, to house an Episcopal mission Oil on canvas H. 23, W. 32 inches of the landscape were more empirical than the mythic emotive expressions of artists such the calm of his landscapes and his playful, gay and lively city scenes." This view from the the style of his predecessors. Eilshemius began to paint the cityscape in the 1890s and beneath artificial lights. The artist's feathery brushstrokes and uneven paint surface are in a Catholic neighborhood. As an observer, I sensed a curious hostility, not so much Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 67.187.170 as Jackson Pollock. They continued the Impressionists' observation of light and artist's home and studio on the top floor of 217 West 14th Street bears out that his subjects include the harbor, bridges, and buildings of New York City. Many of these typical of his Impressionist style at this time, but the composition and subject, a closeup religious as social;... I recall ... one of the mission's head men, in an immaculate frock In Nocturne Soyer presents a group of unemployed men in a downtown cafeteria on the atmosphere, sustaining that interest through the years when more formalistic concerns assessment of his work. Its seemingly awkward character is reminiscent of the city scenes studies were done on the spot, and over half of them, like this painting, were night scenes. view of a busy NewYork street, are not unlike those later used by such realists as Robert coat, carefully groomed, a diamond stick pin in his tie, the fingers holding his hymn book Bowery with sympathetic and emphatic perception. The sense of aimlessness in this work held sway in the art world. Wilson was born in Iowa and received a B.A. and M.F.A. from of his slightly older contemporaries George Ault and Ralph Mayer. Its primitivizing look, Paul Kalstrom notes in his monograph (1978) on Eilshemius "that the night scenes express Henri (1865-1929) and John Sloan (1871-1951)" (American Paintings in the Metropolitan slender and aristocratic; and in front of me, a middle-aged woman with a child in her distinguishes it from the Marsh depiction of the Bowery done five years earlier. Although the University of Iowa; she also studied under Hans Hofmann, whose influence may be which may be attributed to the fact that Baum is largely self-taught, can also be seen as the same preoccupation that led Albert Ryder to walk the streets of New York to study the Museum of Art, vol. 3, NewYork: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980, p. 359). arms, looking the man over from head to foot with a resentful expression I can plainly the two painters used similar somber brown tonalities, the Marsh is more robust in feeling, discerned in her lushly painted surfaces. a reflection of the interest of many American artists in American folk art in the 1920s effects of moonlight" (Louis Michel Eilshemius, NewYork: Harry N. Abrams, 1978, p.63). recall." concentrating on the pulsating energy of the crowd, while the Soyer reflects the artist's and 30s. Undoubtedly influenced by Robert Henri and John Sloan, the "Ash Can School" artists Edward Hopper. American, 1882-1967 In this passage, Myers gives us a remarkable insight into the social and economic rather moody but observant personality. Martin Wong. American, born 1945 who did much to popularize urban subjects, Eilshemius here emphasizes the loneliness From Williamsburg Bridge. 1928 dimensions of the period. Born in Petersburg, Virginia, he spent most of his early life in Soyer produced other compositions in the 1930s that concentrated on the plight of men Attorney Street: Handball Court with Autobiographical Poem . American, born 1914 and alienation of urban life, the strangely separated figures illuminated by the light from Oil on canvas H. 29, W. 43 inches , Trenton, and . In 1886 his family moved to NewYork, where he displaced and unemployed by the Depression. At the same time, he was painting intimate by Pinero. 1982-84 The Block. 1971 the street lamp and the moon in the distance. Long shadows further enhance this George A. Hearn Fund, 37.44 discovered the Lower East Side, whose immigrant population was to become an views of women in interiors, talking, lounging, or sleeping. Oil on canvas H. 35V2, W. 48 inches Cut-and-pasted paper on masonite Six panels, each H. 49, W. 36 inches ambiance. This painting by Edward Hopper encapsulates his signature stylistic elements: his interest important source of his art. Myers studied art at night at and the Art Soyer is one of the central figures in the style of urban illustration known as . Edith C. Blum Fund, 1984.110 Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Shore, 1978.61.1-6 in light on form and the evocation of isolation and loneliness within the urban arena. This Students League, supporting himself painting sets, curtains, and backdrops for the He and his brothers Moses (his twin) and Isaac all studied art after having emigrated from This painting is a collaboration between the artist Martin Wong and his longtime friend, Romare Bearden spent his childhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, his birthplace, and William James Glackens. American, 1870-1938 view from the Williamsburg Bridge, which spans the East River between and theater and later working as a staff artist for the New York Herald. Russia to the , settling in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Soyer studied at the playwright Miguel Pinero. Pinero composed the poem that appears in the upper New York City. After graduating from New York University with a degree in mathematics, Central Park: Winter, ca. 1905 Manhattan, is probably on the Manhattan side as one descends toward Delancey Street. the National Academy of Design, Cooper Union, and with Guy Pene du Bois at the Art portion of the painting as well as the few lines of dialogue at the base of the artist's Bearden studied at the Art Students League, where he came in contact with German artist Oil on canvas H. 25, W. 30 inches Hopper is the epitome of simplicity in his definition of planes and the architectural details John Pel lew. American, born 1903 Students League. painted frame. Wong translates the dialogue on the frame into sign language and the George Grosz, whose art of social criticism and use of photomontage to convey ironic George A. Hearn Fund, 21.164 of the turn-of-the-century building. The horizontal orientation of the composition is Freight. 1937 sign language at the top of the frame translates the title of the painting. In this "landscape social and political messages had an enduring influence on Bearden's work. Bearden's Glackens' view of Central Park in winter may as well be a contemporary scene, so broken only by the subtle diagonal of the railing of the bridge rising to the right at the Oil on canvas H. 34, W. 44 inches Guy Wiggins. American, 1883-1962 without a view," Wong creates a tribute to graffiti artists of his acquaintance. He takes first studio was in Harlem on 125th Street, over that of artist Jacob Lawrence, and the two enduring has this area been in the life of New York City. The park, opened to the public in lower edge of the painting. One almost fails to notice the solitary figure seated on the George A. Hearn Fund, 38.49 Metropolitan Tower. 1912 their glyphic interests one step further by introducing his own stylized version of the sign- men were friends of poet and novelist Claude McKay, who lived in the same building. 1858, was one of the first of the large greenswards designed by Frederick Law Olmsted windowsill, observing life in the street below. Hopper's emphasis on the architecture and A native of England, John Pellew studied art in Cornwall before coming to the United Oil on canvas H. 34 1/16, W. 40 1/8 inches language alphabet of the deaf. The handball court itself is a city playground at the Bearden became part of the 306 group, an informal organization of artists working in and Calvert Vaux. Situated in the center of Manhattan, extending from Fifty-ninth to the ambiance only enhances the feeling of helplessness and alienation that he achieves States in 1921. He has produced work in several media, including watercolor and acrylic, George A. Hearn Fund, 12.105.4 corner of Clinton and Attorney streets in downtown Manhattan. The graffiti written on the Harlem, and a member of the Har/em Artists Guild. By 1941 Bearden was participating in 110th streets, and between Fifth Avenue and Central Park West, this 840-acre tract with his figures. The city is curiously deserted, as if all the inhabitants disappeared save and is the author of books on landscape and marine painting, as well as on various This view of the Metropolitan Tower, painted in 1912, was executed just four years after wall represents a ten-year history of a group of "taggers" whom Wong has known and group shows of Black artists at the McMillan and Downtown galleries. After serving in the contains beautifully landscaped areas with a variety of recreational facilities. Glackens' two: the occupant in the window and the spectator. media. Pellew is a member of the National Academy of Design. Freight represents an the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company building opened. Designed by Le Brun and whose work he has collected. army during the Second World War, Bearden studied at the Sorbonne in Paris (1950-54) painterly style has matter-of-factly recorded a chance group of citizens strolling, sledding, elevated train moving over the long approach to Hell Gate Bridge in Astoria, Queens. under the G.I. Bill. and simply gazing at the park after an abundant snowfall. Although the painter does not Lester Johnson. American, born 1919 The train itself is an iconographie subject that has had a strong attraction for the modern The Block is a tribute to Harlem, a neighborhood that has nurtured and enriched the life of identify the precise location, the depressed glen is not unlike that just south of the Three Bowery Signs. 1964 artist starting with Degas' depiction of the Gare St. Lazare (in which the steam from the Romare Bearden. The six panels present such neighborhood institutions as the evangelical Seventy-ninth Street transverse near Fifth Avenue. Oil on canvas H. 68, W. 90 inches train disembodied the structure of the station visually). The train has represented various church, the barbershop, and the corner grocery store. The artist's eye catches the more Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1984.92 emotive elements in the work of Giorgio de Chirico (whose father was a railroad private moments of life in Harlem, impressing the viewer with the unrelenting stream of William James Glackens. American, 1870-1938 Lester Johnson played an original and pivotal role in the realm of figurative painting in engineer) and René Magritte (who used it as a metaphor for the journey to nowhere). It humanity that exists there. He manipulates scale to focus attention on what he wants Crowd at the Seashore. 1910 postwar American art. His singular figuration arises directly from the gestural vocabulary was the Futurist artists who glorified its mechanical aspects and potential for speed in particularly to notice. Out of a seeming cacophony of visual elements, featuring dramatic Oil on canvas H. 25, W. 30 inches of the Abstract Expressionists. His work also reflects the anguished view of mankind that their compositions. shifts in perspective, color, and size, there emerges a coherent and cohesive portrayal in Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 67.187.126 permeated much of figurative art in the United States and Europe during the 1950s The Block. was a great recorder of American life. Like George Luks, Everett Shinn, and early 1960s. Although Johnson's figures of this period relate to those of Willem Ogden Milton Pleissner. American, 1905-1984 and John Sloan, who were among his associates in the Eight, he began his career as a de Kooning, his particular use of color and preservation of the planar aspect of the Backyards, Brooklyn. 1932 Robert A. Birmelin. American, born 1933 newspaper illustrator in his hometown of Philadelphia. In 1895, on a trip to Europe, he canvas places his works strategically within the allover aesthetic of color-field painting. Oil on canvas H. 24, W. 30V4 inches City Crowd—Cop and Ear. 1979-80 became aware of the Impressionists and learned to use the broad, direct brushstrokes The hieratical quality of the three figures in Three Bowery Signs may relate this work to Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 32.80.2 Acrylic on canvas H. 48, W. 96 inches and dark palette of Manet. Glackens first showed his work at the Macbeth Gallery in several antecedents. However, the figures owe a formal and iconographical debt to This view of the collective backyard area of a group of town houses in Brooklyn was Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Federico Quandrani, 1981.510 1908, in the exhibition for which the Eight was named. He became increasingly influenced Fernand Legers and René Magritte's bowler-hatted men of the 1940s and 50s. Like the painted in the early 1930s. There is a quality in the scene that is almost timeless. In spite Robert Birmelin is both a chronicler of and a commentator on urban life and social by the Impressionists, his palette lightened, and his brushstrokes became small and European artists, Johnson gives heroic stature to the anonymous everyman out of the of the absence of any human figures, there is a feeling of warmth, comfort, and intimacy interaction. As in other paintings of his "City Crowds" series done over the past seven feathery, in the manner of Renoir. urban masses. There is something both tragic and solemnly dignified about these three that is starkly different from a similar view of housing in Edward Hopper's painting of years, the narrative here is ambiguous and poses questions for interpretation. Birmelin "His Crowd at the Seashore illustrates a day at Coney Island, and its affinity is clearly figures, who represent the rather infamous depressed area on Manhattan's Lower East Williamsburg Bridge—also in this exhibition—which was done four years earlier. places us directly in an ongoing scenario. It is the composite of many such scenes he more with Monet and Renoir—with their emphasis on the play of light on surfaces—than Side where the disheveled and the homeless congregate. That Johnson presents them Pleissner's heroicizing of this seemingly banal, local scene reflects the related interests observes during his daily walks from the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Forty-second with Glackens' American contemporaries such as John Sloan and George Bellows, for marching three abreast, in bowler hats, adds an air of pathos to these "signs," who also of the artists of the Regionalist school and the American scene in the unsung aspects of represent the raucous area celebrated in the Marsh painting some thirty years previously. Street down Eighth Avenue to his studio on Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. whom bathing was an excuse to depict human anatomy in action" (Twentieth Century American life and culture. Blurred edges, transparent overlapping of certain ¡mages, and details that are variously American Paintings from the Metropolitan Museum, Southampton: The Parrish Art in and out of focus recreate the experience of walking down the street. The painting Museum, 1977, p. 11). Doris Emrick Lee. American, 1904-1983 Fairfield Porter. American, 1907-1975 represents a startling juxtaposition of immediate, closeup images and a rapid recession Catastrophe. 1936 Near Union Square Looking Up Park Avenue. 1975 into space. Louis Guglielmi. American, 1906-1956 Oil on canvas H. 40, W. 28 inches Oil on canvas H. 62xi, W. 72 inches Birmelin studied at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, Yale University, and Droll Gambit at Coney. 1949 George A. Hearn Fund, 37.43 Gift of Mrs. Fairfield Porter, 1978.224 the Slade School of the University of London. Oil on canvas H. 30, W. 28 inches Although largely overlooked today, Doris Lee was a well-known, critically acclaimed Fairfield Porter was working on this view of Park Avenue looking north from Union Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 50.31.1 figurative painter in the 1930s and 40s. Born in Aledo, Illinois, she graduated from Square when he died, and in 1978 his widow Anne wrote Thomas Hess, former Louis Bouché. American, 1896-1969 Louis Guglielmi once observed that he strove to achieve a psychological content in his Rockford College in 1927. In the 1940s Lee frequently traveled on assignment from Life Consultative Chairman of the Department of Twentieth Century Art: "Whether it's Ten Cents a Ride. 1942 work to create "an American Style of Neo-Romanticism." The rather fanciful nature of Magazine. unfinished or not is hard to say, the photos Fairfield took as notes... show a vagueness in Oil on canvas H. 45, W. 30 inches Droll Gambit at Coney reveals his relationship to a group of American artists (including In 1935, Lee was commissioned by the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture to the far background that's almost as dim as in the painting." The painting records many George A. Hearn Fund, 42.157 Ivan Le Lorraine Albright and Peter Blume) who worked in a surrealist vein during the execute the first of the major murals for the Post Office in Washington, D.C. Catastrophe, landmarks, some still extant, such as the Pan Am building at the apex of the composition, Louis Bouché was born in NewYork City in 1896. He studied in Paris between 1910 and 1930s and 40s. painted in 1936, depicts the explosion of a dirigible and its evacuation over the Upper and others not, such as the former S. Klein annex, recently demolished. Porter captured 1915, and upon his return to NewYork, attended the Art Students League and had his first Guglielmi's debt to is evident in the angular geometric forms of the composition. Bay in New York Harbor. The spectacular skyline of lower Manhattan can be seen in the the fringes of Union Square just as it would undergo a transition, and this work forms exhibition in NewYork in 1917. He heightens our sense of mystery and terror through the use of several compositional distance, and rescue workers frantically guide survivors onto shore at New Jersey at the an interesting trio with the Button and Dennis Smith paintings in chronicling the look of Bouché also taught at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. motifs borrowed from Giorgio de Chirico: the dramatic diagonal perspective of the lower edge of the painting. It is ironic that this work predated the Hindenburg disaster by the square. These associations undoubtedly influenced the meticulous working method he developed window form on the building at the right, and the repeated arch forms of the structure on one year. This painting illustrates Lee's interest in scenes of violence and upheaval, a over the years. He would carefully render diagrammatic drawings of his subjects on the left. The locale is ambiguous, and only the huge Ferris wheel in the distance would preoccupation of many American artists during the 1930s. Josef Presser. American, 1910-1967 tracing paper and later transfer the sketch onto the canvas in his studio. identify the site as an amusement park. Further contributing to our sensation of mystery The Harbor 3 "The care in preparation and execution are evident in his painting Ten Cents a Ride, a and fear is the ambiguity of the composition: what is the relationship between the man Reginald Marsh. American, 1898-1954 Oil on wood H. 34 /*,W. 53'/ inches hard and impressive view of the side aisle of a ferry, softened somewhat by the sensitivity and the horse, and why are they at Coney Island? The Bowery. 1930 Gift of the Pennsylvania W.P.A., 43.46.2 with which the fall of light is depicted. The perspective lines of the wall on the left and the Guglielmi was born in Cairo, and was brought to the United States by his musician father Tempera on masonite H. 48, W. 36 inches Joseph Presser emigrated to the United States from Poland in 1913, settling in Boston, bench at the right lead inevitably through the half arch at the center. By reversing the in 1914. Guglielmi's earliest artistic ambition was to be a sculptor. Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 32.8.12 where he was influenced by a regional expressionism fostered in the 1930s by Abraham usual humanist concentration on figures and landscape, Bouché has made the aisle the The street known as the Bowery was originally an Indian trail used by the native Rattner, Jack Levine, and Hyman Bloom. subject of the picture, rather than what we will see when we get out on deck" (Henry Samuel Halpert. American, 1884-1930 Manhattan Indians in their expeditions against the encroaching Dutch colony at the This view of a tugboat pulling an ocean liner into New York harbor contains the Geldzahler, American Painting in the 20th Century, New York: The Metropolitan Flatiron Building. 1919 southern tip of Manhattan Island. It later was the main road to the farm, bouwerij—hence strong dark contours, filled to bursting with rich colors, that characterized the Boston Museum of Art, 1965, p. 109). Oil on canvas H. 40, W. 34 inches the name—owned by Peter Stuyvesant and the main thoroughfare to Boston. In the 1850s, expressionists. Presser's debt to Cubism is evident; while Fauvism may be the source Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Wesley Halpert, 1981.36 the Bowery was the center of New York City's theater district, but by the 1870s the of the work's brilliant color, The Harbor also contains elements reminiscent of eastern theaters were giving way to saloons, pawnshops, and flophouses. European decoration. The large shape of the smokestack dominates the composition, and John Button. American, 1929-1982 Flatiron Building is a stunning painting, with its semiaerial viewpoint, hazy, blue light Reginald Marsh's celebrated painting shows also the elevated railway that once ran the strong diagonal lines of the pier lead the eye to the center from which the painting's Fourteenth Street: High Noon. 1977 pervading the buildings, and streets cast in shadowy outlines interrupted by patches of along Third Avenue and the Bowery. New York City and its people were Marsh's favorite energy seems to emanate. One is also reminded of the Cubist-inspired views of Lower Gouache on paper H. 1414, W. 20 inches sunlight. The Flatiron Building, designed by Daniel H. Burnham, is located at the subjects. He roamed the streets, subways, burlesque houses, movie theaters, and Manhattan done by the American watercolorist John Marin during the second decade Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert E. Carroll, 1979.138.1 intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and Twenty-third Street. Halpert views the site amusement parks, constantly sketching human activity with fascination and facile of this century. A native of San Francisco, John Button was best known for his cityscapes that chronicle from the upper level of another skyscraper at the northeast side of Madison Square in the precision. This painting reveals Marsh's characteristic emphasis on drawing and his the changing character of New York's light and atmosphere. Educated in California, lower center of the painting. Halpert's pervading light is almost a precursor of Hopper's. particular tempera technique, which exploited warm earth tonalities to achieve a Button moved to NewYork in 1952, and by the mid-1950s he was exhibiting at the Stable In this work, his impressionism has matured into a personal style. What Henry Geldzahler John Sloan. American, 1871-1951 translucency of surface that is unique to his work. and Tibor de Nagy galleries. Like many of his contemporaries, Button turned from has observed about Notre Dame, Paris (1925), another painting by the artist, which has The Wigwam, Old Tammany Hall. 1934 and modified the gestural character of his work to a figurative been in the collection since 1938, can also be said of Flatiron Building: "Halpert's work, Oil on masonite H. 30, W. 25 inches style. pleasantly observed and expertly crafted, can be thought of as the painting of a Ralph Mayer. American, 1895-1979 Lent by United States Government (Public Works of Art Project—NewYork Regional classicizing modernist" (American Painting in the Twentieth Century, New York: The Williamsburg, ca. 1939 Committee) 1934, L. 3257.1 This deceptively modest work demonstrates Button's predilection for dramatic and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965, pp. 82-83). "The Wigwam, Old Tammany Hall, with its crowd sauntering rhythmically by the old unusual vantage points. Only the tip of the Consolidated Edison Company tower at Oil on canvas H. 2614, W. 40 inches political headquarters, not only shows Sloan at his most characteristic as a painter of 4 Irving Place is visible. Like the paintings of Dennis Smith and Fairfield Porter in this Clarence Y. Palitz, Jr., Gift, in memory of Clarence Y. Palitz, Sr., 1983.86.2 exhibition, Button chronicles the development, decline, and revitalization of the Union William L Haney. American, born 1939 Ralph Mayer is perhaps best known as the author of The Artist's Handbook of Materials NewYork scenes, but suggests something of the quality of Reginald Marsh The Square area. The roof of the now demolished S. Klein building huddles with the Up for Sale. 1982 and Techniques, which has been an indispensable source and guide for over forty years. drawing is finer and sharper, more defined than in Sloan's earlier work, or in any of the Con Edison tower in the lower left of the painting. Button has reserved most of the Oil on canvas H. 50, W. 62 inches Mayer's career was dominated by his work as a conservator. He was educated at work of Henri, Luks, or Glackens. The representation of the presidential banner, the neon composition for the brilliant blue sky and the fluffy clouds that are situated as carefully Extended loan and promised gift of Louis F. Polk, Jr., L. 1984.60 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a chemical engineer and at the Art Students League lights, and the generally popular aspect of the scene are confirmation of Sloan's abiding and deliberately as the buildings themselves. An intriguing aspect of Up for Sale is the ambiguity of its title in relation to the scene and combined this training in his life-long work on the materials of art. interest in the American scene. He said, putting the question into its just perspective, 'It is below. The scene is a street market in front of the Federal Hall National Memorial in This view of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn features the Williamsburgh Savings not necessary to paint the American flag to be an American painter. As though you didn't Lower Manhattan. Is the now defunct Federal Hall up for sale, along with the bric-a- Bank and its famous dome. Mayer leads us into the scene under an overpass. The solitary see the American scene whenever you open your eyes! I am not for the American scene. I brac and heirlooms vended in front of it? Originally the Customs House (1842-62), and quality of the composition is comparable to that in Edward Hopper's composition. Mayer am for mental realization. If you are American and work, your work will be American' " subsequently the Subtreasury Building (1862-1925), this edifice replaces one on the same The Artist Celebrates NewYork Selected Paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This exhibition was made possible by a generous grant from the Altman Foundation. The Artist Celebrates Newïörk If one considers New York unique among the cities of the world, it will come as no surprise that it has fired the imagination of countless artists over the past hundred years. There are many reasons for this. New York is the center of world art, a distinction it has held since the end of the Second World War-and before that it was the established mecca for American artists. In addition, it is the principal port of call not only for artists, but also for most immigrants coming to the United States. Hence, it has a uniquely heterogeneous quality that has provided rich thematic material for the canvases of the artist. Finally, New York's architecture—with the possible exception of Chicago—is the most innovative, the most spectacular, and the most renewing in the world. As cities came to dominate the social, political, and economic life of Europe and America in the last century, they changed artists' perceptions. It was apparent first in the canvases of the Parisians; but even they, in the midst of vast and rapid industrialization, were reluctant to take a leap into the new era. The rural and agrarian as well as the traditional mythological subjects still prevailed, in spite of reality to the contrary. With the dawn of the twentieth century, however, the supremacy of the city was incontestable; in America, in spite of some artists' brief attempts to recapture the heartland-the Regionalist School in the 1930s and 40s—the city has become preeminent both as subject matter and as an arena for artistic activity. It was artists associated first with the Eight and then with the so-called Ash Can School, the Fourteenth Street School, and the Social Realists, who focused on the social and economic dynamics of the city. Jerome Myers' Night Mission (1906) reminds us of the extensive philanthropic activity mounted by both municipal and private agencies to deal with the problems of the poor and disadvantaged. A similar tone is reflected in Raphael Soyer's Nocturne (1935), a studio picture of unemployed men during the Great Depression. John Sloan, one of the Eight, was best known at the beginning of this century for his depiction of the crowds of the city. Wigwam, Old Tammany Hall (1934), demonstrates his continuing commitment to that subject. Robert Birmelin provides a ¡aunty update to this theme in his City Crowd—Cop and Ear (1978-80). Romare Bearden presents a whole microcosm of the New York experience in Harlem in his monumental collage The Block (1971). There were also artists who reveled in the look of the city. They found in architecture and industrial motifs material they could combine with innovative artistic modes—such as Impressionism and Cubism—to forge a new statement about art. Skyscrapers were a popular subject, and Guy Wiggins' impressionist Metropolitan Tower (1912) and Samuel Halpert's Flatiron Building (1919) were done soon after the buildings' completion and celebrate their status as radical new elements on the urban landscape. Mark Baum recorded the view f rom his studio on Seventh Avenue and 16th Street (1932) with a meticulous attention to architectural detail that mimics the straightforward naivete of the folk artist. But today's architectural wonder could very well be tomorrow's memory, and artists such as Junius Allen have preserved for us now extinct landmarks such as the Old NewYork Post Office building (1939-40), and the more recent painting Near Union Square Looking Up Park Avenue (1975) by Fairfield Porter chronicles extant and defunct structures that have been subject to the city's impulse to constantly renew itself. John Button's Fourteenth Street: High Noon (1977) almost completes or continues the Porter, and we can see the top of the now demolished S. Klein building and the Con Edison tower, another landmark in the skyline of New York. Rackstraw Downes' IRT Elevated Station at Broadway and 125th Street (1981-83) is a panoramic view of the Upper West Side looking east at 125th Street. It shows several generations of buildings as well as the elevated trains that were once prominent features of the Manhattan landscape. These now defunct lines, such as the Third Avenue El seen in Reginald Marsh's Bowery (1930), were key to transporting large masses of people inexpensively and speedily to various parts of the city. John Pellew's Freight (1937), a view of the Astoria line in Queens, also indicates the appearance of the locomotive as an iconographie element signifying speed, change, and power. There was always resistance to a totally denaturalized environment, and urban planners and idealists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made provision for a system of parks, playgrounds, and even beachfront amusement areas, so that people could escape the city environment. William Glackens'Central Park: Winter (ca. 1905) is a wonderful reminder of the enchantment available even in the middle of Manhattan. Jane Wilson's Playground (1964), set in Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side, and Martin Wong's Attorney Street: Handball Court With Autobiographical Poem by Pinero (1982-84) provide an interesting contrast between parks within the same neighborhood. The development of beaches in New York is natural, in view of the city's location on the Atlantic Coast. Coney Island is one of the best known and the most enduring. Glackens' Crowd at the Seashore (1910) shows a typical group of bathers at the turn of the century. Louis Guglielmi sets his surreal drama Droll Gambit at Coney (1949) in the amusement area of the beach. Of course, the character of New York City is not unremittingly urban. In the boroughs New Yorkers have managed to maintain a more residential and suburban life-style. Doris Lee's Catastrophe (1936) vividly illustrates the dramatic contrast between the literally high density of Manhattan and the spaciousness of the Jersey Shore while providing what turned out to be prophetic content. Lizabeth Mitty's view of the clapboard houses of Queens in Break Out (1982) and Ogden Pleissner's Backyards, Brooklyn (1932) are examples of "the other" New York City. But it is on the ferry between Manhattan and Staten Island that one truly gets a sense of time and distance; Louis Bouché's Ten Cents a Ride (1942) is an unusual tribute to the trip that is taken by thousands of New Yorkers every morning. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this group of paintings of the city is that, besides indicating topographical interest, several of the artists manage to capture the various moods of the city, which range from the atmospheric look of Broadway and 42nd Street (1902) by Childe Hassam, to the contained yet persistently detailed observation of William L. Haney's street fair in Up for Sale (1982), situated in front of Federal Hall in lower Manhattan. The anonymity of the crowd in the Hassam contrasts with the poignantly solitary figure in Edward Hopper's From Williamsburg Bridge (1928), a canvas that is as clear and sunny as the Hassam is misty and rainy. Josef Pressor's expressionist The Harbor (ca. 1935) expresses the violence of this part of the city with dark contours and vigorous color. Louis Eilshemius' New York at Night (ca. 1917) is permeated by an eerie brooding quality that evokes the danger and mystery of the city after dark. Perhaps this reflects the artist's own emotional state, in much the same way that Dennis Smith's Union Square: Hell (1981) does. Finally Lester Johnson's Three Bowery Signs (1964) restores the vitality that characterized the earlier depictions of the city. Here the denizens of this depressed area become heraldic everymen, surrogates for the totality of New York's humanity. This selection of thirty-one paintings on the subject of New York City has been culled from the collections of the Department of Twentieth Century Art and the American Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The earliest painting dates from 1902 and the latest, 1984; it is therefore possible to observe in the work some of the physical modifications of the city, as well as take note of those monuments that have managed to endure in spite of the innovative energy of New York. The paintings also encompass a number of styles that have inflected American art, including the impressionist mode, the realism of the Eight and the , Social Realism, Magic Realism, Gestural Figuration and New Realism.

I am grateful to the Division of Education Services of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Altman Foundation for providing the opportunity to organize this exhibition and to the five sponsoring borough institutions that will host it. Joan Sandler and Robert Friedman have skillfuly coordinated this project. I would also like to thank William S. Lieberman, Chairman of the Department of Twentieth Century Art, and members of his staff, Lisa Messinger, Ida Balboul, Alisa Liskin, and Harriet Rubin for their invaluable help. Finally I wish to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Merrill Halkerson, who, as a summer intern in the department, researched much of the material for this project.

Lowery S. Sims Associate Curator Department of Twentieth Century Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art