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In the first of these two articles looking at paintings depicting change in New York City between the mid-1880s and 1920, I had just introduced the paintings of skyscrapers by Colin Campbell Cooper.

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

Cooper’s Broadway from the Post Office (Wall Street) (c 1909) is another of his most famous skyscraper cityscapes, showing the Singer Building or Tower, at Liberty Street and Broadway, that had only just been completed, and was still the tallest building in the world. Below in Broadway itself the street is packed with people. The golden light on the walls of the buildings is particularly strong, and clouds of steam enhance its effect. The Singer Building, then the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company, was demolished in 1968, and replaced by 1 Liberty Plaza.

Cooper’s Columbus Circle from 1909 is less about the vertical, and more the interaction of jumbled buildings, light, smoke, and steam. With Gaetano Russo’s landmark statue of Christopher Columbus just to the right of centre, the circle had only been completed in 1905, as part of Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision for Central Park, which is off to the right. In the foreground, Cooper shows some of the more intimate sights of this new elevated world, with a woman hanging out her washing amid the chimneys.

New York from Brooklyn (c 1910) shows the busy piers of Brooklyn still operating as the major gateway into the East Coast, and the ultimate collection of skyscrapers, most of which had only recently been completed. The colour contrast between the pale gold faces in sunlight and the almost purple of cast shadow is characteristic of Cooper’s style.

George Bellows trained with Robert Henri in New York, and worked from his own studio in the city for much of his career. As Cooper was busy painting skyscrapers, Bellows concentrated on the lives of working class migrants living in the tenements of Lower East Side.

He showed the deep excavations required for the construction of the city’s skyscrapers.

Bellows’ The Bridge, Blackwell’s Island (1909) shows the Queensboro Bridge linking Manhattan with Queens to the east. Its piers rest on Blackwell’s Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). This view was painted from the Manhattan end in December 1909, shortly after it had been opened, when it was the greatest cantilever bridge in the world.

New York (1911) balances the world of the people of New York, with that of their buildings. It was shown that year in the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design, in New York, and annually thereafter for the rest of Bellows’ career, but wasn’t sold until after his death.

Bellows’ famous Cliff Dwellers (1913) shows the largely immigrant population of tenements in Lower East Side. This was the first painting to be purchased by the county of Los Angeles for its new museum of art, in 1916, where it remains today.

In his later paintings, Cooper moved from the solid mass of skyscrapers to greater lightness and greenery. Although one high building is still present in his New York Public Library (c 1915), the street is less densely packed, and the plants and trees brilliant green.

Joseph Stella was Italian by birth, and first migrated to New York City in 1896 to study medicine. He soon changed his mind, though, and studied painting under William Merritt Chase, at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. On completion of his training, he worked as an illustrator, but became increasingly unhappy, so returned to Italy in 1909. He travelled back to New York City in 1913, to give the US a second try, and stayed in the city until his death there in 1946.

Stella was attracted to the dazzling electric lights of Luna Park (1913) on Coney Island, which had opened a decade earlier. His new style developed when he had been in Paris was startlingly different, and Futurist.

This was followed by Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras (1913), one of the earliest, and still among the greatest, of American Futurist paintings. Although it’s sometimes claimed that it was exhibited at the famous (even notorious) International Exhibition of Modern Art held in New York in early 1913, known now as the Armory Show, Stella didn’t complete it until the autumn of that year, when it went on display in a private gallery in New York.

Stella was nothing if not eclectic. In 1919-20, he painted probably his best-known work, this Cubist geometric analysis of Brooklyn Bridge (1919-20).

As he grew older, Colin Campbell Cooper still apparently craved the occasional skyscraper, and must have painted Hudson River Waterfront, New York City (c 1921) when he was back in his East Coast studio. The highlit and tallest building on the left is the Woolworth Building, completed in 1913, and until 1930 the tallest building in the world, at 241.4 metres. But here the clouds are also built up high, and rise to belittle such human structures, as they did in landscape paintings of the Dutch Golden Age.

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.

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