At the start of the nineteenth century, the population of New York City was only 60,000, about a tenth that of Paris. By 1900, Paris had grown to about 2.7 million, and New York had outstripped it, reaching 3.4 million. This weekend I look at paintings depicting that change in New York between the mid-1880s and 1920. This article concentrates on the transition from leafy suburbs to skyscrapers of the early twentieth century, and tomorrow’s shows the human landscape a little later.

For those less familiar with New York City at the end of the nineteenth century, this contemporary map might help.

When William Merritt Chase returned from his training in Europe in 1878, he moved to New York, where he kept a studio for most of the rest of his life. From about 1886, he started painting outdoor scenes around Brooklyn and other parts of New York City, but ceased these by the time that he started teaching plein air painting at Shinnecock, Long Island, in 1891.

Over this period, Chase’s favourite scenes were those of the huge Prospect Park, then on the southern edge of Brooklyn. This had been the next project for Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux after they finished Manhattan’s Central Park, and had only been completed in 1873.

Brooklyn Landscape (c 1886) shows a few buildings in the distance, which could as easily have been a more rural setting. The rough land in the foreground does at least have the appearance of urban waste ground, before the area became more densely developed.

In his waterfront view of The East River (c 1886), Chase avoids getting too close to the factories and warehouses seen on the skyline. This is the waterway that separates Brooklyn from Manhattan Island to the north-west.

In Harbor Scene, Brooklyn Docks (1886), he follows similar compositional principles, even bringing in some grass and trees on the left.

The buildings Chase painted were seldom those typical of cities: Boat House, Prospect Park (1887) is far from urban, and the scene almost empty of people.

A City Park (c 1887) shows the edge of a park, where there are more people, and some distant buildings, but like his earlier waterfront views, they’re kept sufficiently small as to avoid their dominance.

This view of Prospect Park, Park in Brooklyn (c 1887), follows the same pattern.

Chase also painted a few works that take us into the backyards, including his Washing Day – A Backyard Reminiscence of Brooklyn (c 1887). Apart from the dominating washing, and the shrouded woman hanging it out, all we’re shown are trees and grass.

In his The Open Air Breakfast (c 1888), the house in the background is cunningly disguised, revealing only disembodied steps and a doorway.

Painted towards the end of this phase of his landscapes, his View from Central Park (1889) relegates the large buildings of Manhattan to its distant skyline.

Chase’s paintings of New York City are remarkable for his skill in turning each into a patch of green countryside, and carefully avoiding any passages which might look in the least bit urban, Brooklyn as leafy suburb.

Robert Henri’s art had centred largely on Philadelphia until he started teaching at the New York School of Art in 1902. By that time, he had rejected Impressionism and effectively joined what became known as the Ashcan School, for its gritty realist depictions of the contemporary American city.

On 5 March 1902, Henri painted Snow in New York (1902), a true cityscape devoid of trees or green, its streets properly populated.

Colin Campbell Cooper initially trained with Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, then studied in Paris. He moved to New York City in 1904, by which time he had already started to paint urban landscapes. Once he was among the growing skyscrapers of the city, they became something of an obsession, together with the crowded streets below. He was probably the first American painter who specialised in cityscapes.

Cooper’s The Ferries, New York (c 1905) is a superb study of the dense crush of people on the ferries, the waterside warehouses, and the abundant smoke and steam among the higher buildings in the background.

Flatiron Building, Manhattan (c 1908) is an important painting in many ways, and one of the few made by Cooper using casein paints, which had just come into vogue. This was painted just a few years after this distinctive landmark at 175 Fifth Avenue had been completed (1902). Then one of the tallest buildings in New York City, at 20 floors high, its triangular section makes it instantly recognisable. It was originally named the Fuller Building, after George A Fuller, the ‘father of the skyscraper’, but quickly gained its more popular title. It was equally quickly photographed in classic images by Alfred Stieglitz (1903) and Edward Steichen (1904), but Cooper’s composition, with its bustle of people, carriages, and aerial wisps of steam, makes his view one of the most impressive.

Tomorrow we’ll resume with Cooper’s skyscrapers.

In 1891, William Merritt Chase was invited to teach the skills of painting en plein air in the east of Long Island, New York. The following year he moved his family from New York City to live in their new house in Shinnecock for the summer, as he taught hundreds of students locally. This is part of his own painted record of the twelve consecutive summers he taught there, and follows on from the first that covered the years 1891-95.

Near the Beach, Shinnecock shows the undeveloped land between the Chase house and Shinnecock Bay in about 1895.

Shinnecock Hills shows one of the better tracks running inland, painted one summer between 1893-1897.

Shinnecock Hills is another track in about 1895, at the height of the summer.

Shinnecock Hills, Long Island from about 1895 shows two of the Chase family foraging for berries in the wild shrubs near their house.

Shinnecock Landscape with Figures is another view of foraging fruit in 1895.

Chase’s undated Sunlight and Shadow, Shinnecock Hills looks west along Shinnecock Bay towards West Hampton.

Landscape: Shinnecock, Long Island is a similar view from about 1896, this time with members of his family.

Morning at Breakwater, Shinnecock returns to the beach in Shinnecock Bay in about 1897, this time looking to the east.

Afternoon Shadows, also from about 1897, shows a location further from their home, with more substantial trees and a farm.

Seaside Flowers shows the Chase family picking summer flowers in about 1897.

First Touch of Autumn looks west as fall colours are starting in about 1898.

Chase’s students made many of their own paintings, most of which have now become obscure or lost. One exception is an early landscape by Julian Onderdonk (1882–1922).

Shinnecock (1906) shows Chase’s unmistakeable influence, and was perhaps painted when Onderdonk was a guest of the Chase family at Shinnecock that year. Onderdonk went on to great success painting bluebonnets in Texas until he died tragically early in 1922, only six years after his teacher.

In the twelve consecutive summers that William Merritt Chase taught plein air painting in Shinnecock, he trained and inspired a whole generation of artists.

References

Hirshler EE (2016) William Merritt Chase, Museum of Fine Arts Boston. ISBN 978 0 87846 839 3.
Longwell AG (2014) William Merritt Chase, A Life in Art, Parrish Art Museum and D Giles. ISBN 978 1 907804 43 4.
Smithgall E et al. (2016) William Merritt Chase, A Modern Master, The Phillips Collection and Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20626 5.

In 1891, plein air painting, particularly in oils, was a relatively new technique in the US, and growing rapidly in popularity. It was Janet Hoyt who first invited William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) to come to the new art village in western Southampton (or South Hampton), Long Island, to teach the hundreds of students attending her new plein air art school.

This tourist map from 1868 shows Long Island stretching from Brooklyn at the lower left to its north-eastern tip. Shinnecock and its bay are outlined in red, to the west of South Hampton, in what was then sparsely populated country, as shown in the detail below.

By the following summer, Chase’s friend Stanford White had designed and built the Chase family a summer house at Shinnecock, with an integral studio. They moved out of New York at the start of the summer, and while father was busy teaching the hundreds of students, his wife and children enjoyed the surrounding almost untouched countryside, the beaches, and a different pace of life.

Chase continued to teach for twelve consecutive summers at Shinnecock, his skills and experience being shared with thousands of aspiring painters. In later years, when he was drawn back to Europe, and Florence in particular, his family continued to grow up in the sunny Long Island summers.

His Impressionist style was at its strongest when sketching outdoors in oils at Shinnecock. There’s no point in trying to elaborate or explain his paintings in words: they show the skies, rough scrub, the Chase house, beaches, old tracks, and of course his wife and children. I have arranged them in approximate chronological order, but otherwise I’ll leave it to his paintings to show you his favourite Shinnecock.

Summer at Shinnecock Hills in 1891, painted during his first summer visit, before his house was built.

Shinnecock Hills (A View of Shinnecock), another oil sketch from that first visit in 1891.

A Sunny Day at Shinnecock Bay painted looking west along the bay, showing his family during their second summer in 1892, the year they occupied their new house there.

At The Seaside painted in about 1892, showing his family on the beach of Shinnecock Bay, seeking shade under parasols, one of which is influenced by Japonisme.

Shell Beach at Shinnecock, probably from the same summer in about 1892, also on the beach of Shinnecock Bay.

One of his first oil sketches showing The Chase Homestead, Shinnecock, in about 1893.

The Old Road to the Sea looking in the other direction, from their house down to Shinnecock Bay, in 1893.

October probably from the fall of 1893, looking inland from near their house.

Idle Hours shows Chase’s family growing up, and back in Shinnecock Bay in 1894.

The Old Sand Road is another of the rough tracks running near to their house, seen in 1894. Note the distant houses on the skyline to the right.

Gathering Autumn Flowers shows the Chase family outdoors in the early fall of 1894 or 1895

The Big Bayberry Bush from another fine summer day in about 1895, with the Chase family home in the background. The bayberry is a fragrant native shrub whose leaves are used as insect repellent.

References

Hirshler EE (2016) William Merritt Chase, Museum of Fine Arts Boston. ISBN 978 0 87846 839 3.
Longwell AG (2014) William Merritt Chase, A Life in Art, Parrish Art Museum and D Giles. ISBN 978 1 907804 43 4.
Smithgall E et al. (2016) William Merritt Chase, A Modern Master, The Phillips Collection and Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20626 5.

In the seventeenth century, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici started collecting self-portraits of painters. This collection has grown to include over two thousand paintings, sculptures and drawings, and is now part of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy. During the eighteenth century, as painting interiors was developing as a genre, some artists took to painting not just themselves, but their studio as well. Here’s a selection of those.

The American artist John Ferguson Weir’s first major painting was An Artist’s Studio from 1864, in which the artist in question is his father, not himself. It has the air of meticulous veracity, and was exhibited, sold, and brought the painter’s election as an associate of the National Academy.

Paul Cézanne’s roughly painted Stove in the Studio from about 1865 includes the two most important items, the stove to provide heat, and a canvas to provide a painting surface.

Frédéric Bazille’s broad view of his Studio on the Rue La Condamine, from 1869-70, reveals the wide open space that he shared with Renoir at the time. The artist stands at the centre, next to his easel with his View of the Village in progress. Manet painted himself standing in front of Bazille, with a hat and beard.

In 1878, the American artist William Merritt Chase rented the main gallery in the Tenth Street Studio Building at 51 West Tenth Street, Greenwich Village, New York City. For the next seventeen years this was to be his place of work, public image, extended persona, private stage, personal gallery, and the motif for at least a dozen of his paintings.

The building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, had been completed in 1857, was demolished in 1956, and was one of the first in America to be designed specifically for visual artists. Notable previous occupants include Winslow Homer, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt. When Chase moved in, the building was owned by John Taylor Johnston, who later became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Painted just the year after he moved in, Chase’s Studio Interior (c 1879) is one of his few paintings of studios lacking figures, but shows off his ornately carved wooden chest, a copy of an Old Master, and some of his more exotic props. Chase was quick to recognise the promotional value of his studio: as it grew steadily more exotic, and more populated with his own work, he encouraged the press to write about it, to promote his image as a successful artist.

His Tenth Street Studio from 1880 shows one of his portraiture clients, engaged in discussion with a painter who could be Chase, but recedes into the shadows. At the woman’s feet is an elegant dog, and she is surrounded by intriguing and tasteful objects.

In his Studio Interior (c 1882), another fashionably dressed young woman is glancing through a huge bound collation of Chase’s work, sat by an even grander carved wooden sideboard, decorated with almost outlandish objects including a model ship, a lute, and sundry objets d’art.

A Corner of My Studio (c 1895) is a more formal and finished record of Chase’s studio in its final year. Through the curtained doorway, we see in the distance one of Chase’s students painting diligently.

William McGregor Paxton’s open fire In the Studio (1905) is appropriately classy, glowing in the background. He deliberately defocussed it in what he termed Vermeer’s “binocular vision”. His model is in crisp focus, and as the eye wonders further away from her as the optical centre of the painting, edges and details become progressively more blurred.

Olga Boznańska, the Polish Impressionist, painted this uncomplicated Interior of the artist’s studio in Krakow in 1906.

When Carl Larsson painted his Self-Portrait in his new studio in 1912, he sits back with the ease of a successful artist in his late fities. Around him are the creature comforts furnished by that success, and designed by his wife. There are some gentle touches of eccentricity, like the sword passing through the huge book open in front of him, and the statue whose feet are propping the book up.

Jesters or fools appear to have originated as entertainers in ancient Rome, and were features in many of the royal courts in Europe. Among the most famous are those in the plays of William Shakespeare. In this article, I look at paintings of fools and jesters, and tomorrow those of their intellectual complements, sages and sundry wise persons.

Some of Shakespeare’s fools play significant roles in the plot, of whom the most famous must be Yoric, on whose skull Hamlet gives one of the most memorable speeches in the English language.

This was sufficient for Philip Hermogenes Calderon to paint a speculative scene of The Young Lord Hamlet in 1868, showing the prince long before the start of the play. Set in happier days before the death of Hamlet’s father, its reading is an interesting challenge. If the figure on hands and knees, wearing the standard jester’s rig, is Yoric, then presumably the young boy riding on his back is Hamlet, and the younger infant in the care of the three women on the right might be the young Ophelia.

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret shows the famous scene of Hamlet and the Gravediggers (1883) as the prince is about to lament the passing of Yoric to the gravediggers, opening with the words “To be, or not to be…”.

The fool in King Lear has a lesser role, although at least he remains alive and well throughout the play. His most prominent moment is when he accompanies the enraged king out into a tempest.

Ary Scheffer’s watercolour of King Lear and the Fool from 1834 places the pair on Shakespeare’s bleak heath.

In William Dyce’s King Lear and the Fool in the Storm from about 1851, the king is having a good rant into the wind of the storm, his body language profuse. Resting with his head propped on the heels of his hands, the Fool also looks up to the heavens.

Shakespeare’s other plays feature fools and jesters who sing and entertain, like Touchstone in As You Like It.

JW Waterhouse painted his portrait in watercolour, in his undated Jester.

Daniel Maclise’s Wrestling Scene in ‘As You Like It’ from 1854 shows the wrestler Charles on the left, as Orlando on the right prepares for their contest. The two daughters, Celia and Rosalind, embrace one another in anxiety, and Touchstone is seated at the front.

John Collier’s undated painting of Touchstone and Audrey catches the jester in one of his more serious moments, as he woos the simple Audrey.

My last Shakespearean fool appears in Twelfth Night.

Walter Deverell’s Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV (1850) show Feste the clown singing to Orsino and Viola, disguised as Cesario.

A few non-theatrical fools and jesters also appear in paintings.

“Keying Up” – The Court Jester was one of William Merritt Chase’s student paintings, made in 1875 when he was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. He sent this back to his sponsors in St. Louis, Missouri, where it went on to win a medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition that year.

Georges Clairin had a reputation of being a socialite, but his King’s Fool from 1880 is unusual and great fun.

Other than the fictional Yoric, few jesters or fools have attained fame. One notable exception to this is Stańczyk, a Polish court jester who lived between about 1480-1560.

In 1917 Kazimierz Sichulski painted this Portrait of Józef Piłsudski with Wernyhora and Stańczyk in pastels. Piłsudski was a major Polish statesman who was to become Chief of State after the First World War. Stańczyk (left) here symbolises Poland’s struggle for independence. Wernyhora (right) is a legendary Cossack bard who apparently told of the fall of Poland and its subsequent rebirth as a great nation. Both Piłsudski and Wernyhora feature in contemporary paintings by Jacek Malczewski.