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Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925 and Advertising in the Age of the Ashcan Artists

November 28, 2007 - February 10, 2008

New York City's first museum, the New-York Historical Society, is showcasing the dynamic works of America's first modern painters -- "The Eight" and the Ashcan School -- in Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925. The exhibition commemorates the centennial of their groundbreaking 1908 show at New York's Macbeth Galleries with more than seventy renowned canvasses. Featured among these are William Glackens' celebrated 1905 painting At Mouquin's (Chez Mouquin), George Bellows' famous boxers, Everett Shinn's lively theater and music hall scenes, and John Sloan's 1912 tribute to McSorley's Bar, a landmark New York establishment still operating on East 7th Street. (right: George Bellows, A Day in June, 1913., Oil on canvas, 42 x 48 inches. Detroit Institute of Arts, Lizzie Merrill Palmer Fund)

"This vibrant turn-of-the-century community of New York artists, popularly known today as the Ashcan School, represents a pivotal moment in the history of American art, and in the history of New York City as a hotbed of cultural energy," said Dr. Linda S. Ferber, Vice President and Museum Director. While best known today for depictions of the grittier side of working class life, Life's Pleasures explores other aspects of urban modernity that also captivated this group of progressive painters. They were drawn to the urban sites of commercial and public leisure, where New York's diverse population converged at the turn of the last century to be entertained, to play, and to see and be seen. Their vivid paintings capture the local color and social rituals associated with dining out; performances at the theater, circus, and music hall; promenading in the city's parks; playing at its beaches and waterfronts; and enjoying sporting events.

The group was formed in New York around the charismatic teacher and painter Robert Henri. The circle (and the exhibition) includes George Bellows, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Maurice Prendergast, Guy Pène du Bois and others. Since many of them had begun their careers as newspaper illustrators, they naturally found their subjects in the everyday life of the city. In 1908, Henri invited a group of these artists to show as "The Eight" in a controversial exhibition at New York's Macbeth Galleries. Several of the works in that acclaimed show are now on view at the N-YHS. The larger circle around "The Eight" was later dubbed the "Ashcan School" when an art critic caustically described their subject matter as "ash cans and girls hitching up their skirts."

While the Ashcan artists are perhaps best remembered for painting urban working-class life, Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure demonstrates that they also drew some of their richest and best-known subjects from observing a broader spectrum of New Yorkers at leisure and at play. The exhibition includes John Sloan's South Beach Bathers, ca. 1907-8; Robert Henri's Salome, 1909; Everett Shinn's Theatre Scene, 1906-7; George Bellows' Forty-two Kids, 1907; George Luks' The Café Francis, c. 1906; George Bellows' Dempsey and Firpo, 1924; and William Glackens' Hammerstein's Roof Garden, c. 1901. Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925 was organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts under the curatorial direction of James W. Tottis, Associate Curator of American Art.

The N-YHS has enriched the exhibition at this venue with prints, photographs and ephemera from its renowned archives and collections to offer visitors a rich perspective on the modern world that captivated the Ashcan painters and their fellow New Yorkers. In addition, the installation Advertising in the Age of the Ashcan Artists features forty rarely displayed posters and advertising broadsides drawn from N-YHS collections.

The N-YHS museum curatorial team was led by Dr. Kimberly Orcutt, Associate Curator of American Art, and Dr. Marilyn S. Kushner, Curator and Head, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections. "The exhibition offers a fresh view of the Ashcan artists' work as they depicted the leisure sites and activities that were, and are still, an integral part of the urban experience," notes Dr. Orcutt.

A fully illustrated catalogue titled Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925 co-published by the Detroit Institute of Arts and Merrell, accompanies the exhibition. Authors of the thoughtful and informative essays include James W. Tottis, Valerie Ann Leeds, Vincent DiGirolamo, Marianne Doezema, and Suzanne Smeaton, with contributions from Michael E. Crane and Kirsten Olds. The catalogue is available in the N-YHS Museum Store.

Public Programs

Public programs accompanying Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artist's Brush with Leisure include:

 

Curator-led Gallery Tours on December 13, January 9 and January 17.

 

Looking into the Ashcan: Ways of Seeing, a symposium featuring Katherine Manthorne, David Nasaw, Suzanne Smeaton, James W. Tottis, Sylvia Yount and Rebecca Zurier on Saturday, December 1, 2007 1:00 pm.

 

LeRoy Neiman's Leisure Painting featuring the artist discussing the ways he was influenced by the Ashcan School with David Halle, former director of the LeRoy Neiman Center for the study of American Society and Culture, UCLA, and N-YHS Vice President Linda S. Ferber on Thursday, January 24, 2008 6:30 pm.

 

Henri, Sloan and their New York with , Vincent DiGirolamo, Valerie Ann Leeds, Kimberly Orcutt, and Joyce K. Schiller on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 6:30 pm.

 

New York Magic and Harry Houdini, featuring magician Bob Friedhoffer, George Schindler and Kenneth Silverman on Thursday, February 7, 2008

6:30 pm.

Wall text and object labels from the exhibition Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925

 

"It seems to me that an artist must be a spectator of life; a reverential, enthusiastic, emotional spectator." -- George Bellows, 1917

 

In the early twentieth century, the charismatic painter and teacher Robert Henri dismissed "art as art" and declared: "I am interested in life." Around this rallying cry, a group of New York artists, including George Bellows, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Guy Pène du Bois, and several others, followed suit. Some were newspaper illustrators who easily found subjects for paintings in the everyday life of the city. Others heeded Henri's call for realism by observing their surroundings, whether in New York or in Paris. In 1908, eight of these urban realists, led by Henri, organized a sensational exhibition at New York's Macbeth Galleries. Several works from that controversial show of "The Eight" are on view here. These painters and the larger circle of Henri's disciples, later dubbed the "Ashcan School," are remembered for painting the grittier side of urban working-class life.

 

At the same time, these artists also found some of their richest and best-known subject matter by observing a broader spectrum of New Yorkers at leisure and at play. The booming city that these artists painted was changing rapidly. For some people, more modern labor conditions spurred the growth of a middle class that enjoyed higher pay, shorter hours, and leisure time. The concept of the weekend emerged, and young, single workingwomen experimented with a newfound independence. The Ashcan artists were drawn to the leisure sites of early twentieth-century life. Their vivid paintings capture the local color and social rituals associated with dining out and drinking; theatrical performances; sporting events; promenading in the city's parks; and playing at its beaches and waterfronts. In Life's Pleasures these works appear alongside photographs, posters, postcards, sheet music, and ephemera from the New-York Historical Society collections, to offer the visitor a rich perspective on the modern world that captivated these progressive painters.

 

Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925 was organized by the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Major funding for the exhibition at the New-York Historical Society has been provided by Richard Gilder and Lois Chiles. Additional generous support comes from Richard and Roberta Huber; the Barrie and Deedee Wigmore Foundation; the Cordover Family Foundation; Sue Ann Weinberg; and the Henry Luce Foundation. We are also grateful to Nancy Newcomb and John Hargraves; Pamela and R. Scott Schafler; Hope and Grant Winthrop; and to the LeRoy Neiman Foundation for helping to bring the exhibition and related public programs to New York audiences.

 

 

 

Dining Out

 

The Ashcan artists painted from the modern urban life they observed in and around New York City. They often depicted cafes, bars, and restaurants, sometimes including friends and acquaintances among the patrons. At the turn of the century, social life in New York was changing. Dining, drinking, and socializing away from home became more widespread. In the past respectable women could not appear in the public rooms of restaurants without causing gossip, but this too changed as it became acceptable for women to participate in public life.

 

New York offered a range of dining options for every pocketbook. Saloons like McSorley's Old Ale House formed the hub of the workingman's leisure universe. Spectacular establishments like Churchill's and Murray's Roman Gardens opened near Broadway and 42nd Street for theatergoers. Other venues like the opulent Waldorf-Astoria offered more elegant amenities for an elite clientele (as well as the exclusionary velvet rope at the door).

Paris was also an important city for the Ashcan artists and they eagerly embraced the French Impressionist example of painting café life. Back in New York, their social lives revolved around Francophile establishments attracting a lively and eclectic clientele of theatergoers, artists, critics, and writers, such as Mouquin's, Café Francis, and Petitpas'.

 

Murray's New York, Wine List, 1908

Menu

The New-York Historical Society Library Collections

 

Beer tray, 1885-1915

Metal

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Gift of Bella C. Landauer, 2002.1.3516

 

Valentine Souvenir Company, New York

"Churchill's," Broadway and Forty-Ninth Street New York, undated

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Unknown Photographer

Untitled (Advertisement for Café Martin), 1910

Reproductive photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Leslie Dorsey Collection of Pictorial Clippings

 

Untitled (Café Martin), 1909

Menu

The New-York Historical Society Library Collections, The Arnold Shircliffe Menu Collection

 

Unknown Photographer

Untitled (Murray's Restaurant, 34th St. & B'way), ca. 1908-20

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, W. Johnson Quinn Collection

 

Brown Brothers, New York

Untitled (Murray's Restaurant interior, 34th St. & B'way), ca. 1908-20

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, W. Johnson Quinn Collection

 

At the turn of the century new lavishly appointed restaurants such as Café Martin, Murray's, and Churchill's opened on and near Broadway for theater crowds. Dubbed "lobster palaces" for their late-night lobster dinners, these establishments were known for opulent décor and the notorious behavior of the patrons, as actors and chorus girls mixed with businessmen.

 

Unknown Photographer

Kitchen of Waldorf Hotel, 1893

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, W. Johnson Quinn Collection

 

Tip Tray (Hotel Astor), 1890-1920

Ceramic

The New-York Historical Society, Gift of Bella C. Landauer, 2002.1.578

 

Menu (Hotel Astor), 1909

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

The Indian Grill Room, Hotel Astor, New York, postmarked 1917

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Drucker-Hilbert Co., New York

Untitled (The "Peacock Alley" in the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel), ca. 1897

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

For the very wealthy, New York's glittering new hotels were stages for display and monuments to the new social order. In 1893, millionaire William Waldorf Astor built the Waldorf Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street. Some chroniclers suggest that Astor wanted to ruin the view of his aunt, the famous Mrs. William Astor, who lived nearby and had slighted his wife's social ambitions. The venerable lady was forced to flee uptown. On the site of her former home, she and her son John Jacob Astor IV built the Astoria Hotel. The two establishments merged to form the Waldorf-Astoria (demolished in 1928 and rebuilt at its current location at Park Avenue and 50th Street). The old Waldorf-Astoria was famous for the "Peacock Alley," a public corridor where rich fashionables promenaded on their way to private dining rooms. In 1904 William capitalized on his success by building the Hotel Astor on Broadway and 44th Streets, a hostelry with enormous public rooms and an elaborate roof garden that boasted fountains, trees, grottoes, and waterfalls.

 

Untitled (Steve Brodie's Saloon on the Bowery), ca. 1886-1900

Newspaper clipping

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, George T. Bagoe Collection, Gift of Mrs. Elihu Spicer, 1960-61

 

Unknown Photographer

Untitled (Saloon on the Bowery), 1904-5

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Turn-of-the-century saloons were the hub of the workingman's social universe. Saloons often provided free lunches with lots of salty food to encourage patrons to order drinks. The photograph immediately above suggests the assorted characters and types that frequented these gathering places; on the back is written "Chuck Connors, gang leader, 4th from right." Steve Brodie became famous for jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886 (though his claim was disputed). He used his notoriety to open the popular watering hole that is seen in the newspaper clipping.

 

Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)

Tenderloin at Night, 1899

2 minutes, 5 seconds

Archival film from the collections of the Library of Congress

 

According to a contemporary writer, some of New York's most notorious establishments were "the all-night restaurants patronized by the after-theater crowd, which lie in the 'Tenderloin.'" The Tenderloin district, a seedy neighborhood known for raucous bars and bordellos, extended roughly from 23rd to 42nd Streets between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. The criminal mischief carried out there inspired this comic film, in which an unsuspecting customer enters a restaurant only to be drugged and robbed by the patrons.

 

Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958)

Café Madrid (Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Chester Dale), 1926

Oil on canvas

Museum of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg, Florida, Bequest of John Hinkle 1990.8

 

Guy Pène du Bois was a student of Henri's who also exercised his considerable skills as a reporter, an illustrator, and a critic. He was an astute observer of social types known for satirical images of the new moneyed class. This double portrait shows du Bois' principal benefactor, collector Chester Dale, dining with his wife Maude at the Café Madrid. Du Bois painted effective likenesses of the collector and his spouse; however, it has been suggested that the painting also reflects the artist's conflicted relationship with his patrons. Du Bois once commented that Dale's "glories have to be in things money can buy him for they are absolutely not in him." Du Bois' critical attitude may be reflected in the rigid postures of the couple and their vapid, abstracted expressions.

 

Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958)

Café d'Harcourt, ca. 1905-6

Oil on canvas board

Private Collection

 

Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958)

At the Table, 1905

Oil on board

Private Collection

 

Like many of his generation, du Bois studied in New York with the influential American realist Robert Henri, who encouraged bold, free brushwork and exhorted his students to find their subjects in the life around them. Du Bois took these lessons to Paris with him in 1905, where he sketched scenes in cafés that also evoke earlier French realist work. From his quick studies came small vigorous paintings like these; dark and moody in their palette, they convey a sense of Bohemian café life. Du Bois also used modernist compositional devices, cropping the image of the table in one painting, and in the other, using the forms of brightly lit tabletops to create a deep recession into space.

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

At Mouquin's (Chez Mouquin), 1905

Oil on canvas

The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection, 1925.295

 

Everett Shinn (1876-1953)

Mouquin's, 1904

Pastel and pencil on cardboard

Collection of The Newark Museum, Purchase 1949, Arthur Egner Memorial Fund

 

Tray (Mouquin's Restaurant), ca. 1905

Metal

Collection of Ken Ratner, New York

 

Mouquin's was a popular New York café and a frequent destination for the Ashcan artists and their friends. Shinn's pastel shows the exterior of the restaurant, located at Sixth Avenue and 28th Street in the theater district known as the Tenderloin. The entrance, with its lights and colorful canopy, offers an inviting respite to passersby on a wet winter night.

 

Glackens' vibrant painting of the interior evokes the spectacle of Parisian café scenes by the French realist painters Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet. The well-dressed man in the painting is James B. Moore, a lawyer and bon vivant. His fashionable companion is Jeanne Louise Mouquin, wife of Henri Mouquin, the café's proprietor. Glackens may have originally intended to include him in the painting, but perhaps found him too busy with his duties. A mirror behind Moore and Mme. Mouquin reflects the crowded restaurant as well as images of the artist's wife, Edith Glackens, and the art critic Charles Fitzgerald, who sit nearby. At Mouquin's was included in the controversial 1908 exhibition of "The Eight" at the Macbeth Galleries, where the painting earned both praise for its realism and criticism for what was thought to be its vulgar emphasis on drinking.

 

Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872-1930)

The Story (The Diners; Pleasures of the Table), ca. 1898-99

Oil on canvas

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966 (HMSG 66.2410)

 

Though Hawthorne was not closely associated with the Ashcan artists, the dark, tenebrous palette, looming figures, and splendid still life in The Story were inspired by realist ambitions. Lively conversation and witty repartee were (and still are) an important part of urban leisure. The paintings of the Ashcan artists and many of their contemporaries captured social encounters in bars and restaurants that resonate with the kind of banter, argument, and storytelling that is seen between these two well-dressed but roguish-looking characters, whose indulgence in the contents of the silver punchbowl has probably fueled their conversation.

 

Robert Henri (1865-1929)

Portrait of George Luks, 1904

Oil on canvas

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

 

Henri painted this splendid portrait of his friend and fellow artist George Luks in a single sitting in January 1904. This ambitious painting by the acknowledged leader of the New York realists evokes the circle's admiration for seventeenth-century Spanish and Dutch portraits with its sober palette, powerful figure, and fluent brushwork. Henri may have provided the gray painter's smock worn over Luks' suit to suggest -- like the cigarette -- a bohemian milieu and a sense of informality, despite the painting's grand scale. While Henri worked, Luks was at leisure, leaning against a frame, his relaxed posture and genial expression attesting to the two artists' professional and social camaraderie. Henri, Luks, and their colleagues shared both work and play, leading them to paint their own leisure activities, and those of others.

 

Edward Hopper (1882-1967)

Dandy Seated at a Café Table, 1906-7

Watercolor

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest

 

Edward Hopper studied with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art. There he learned to be what Hopper himself called a "sketch hunter," wandering the city in search of his subjects. He continued this practice when he traveled to Paris in 1906-7, 1909, and 1910. It was probably there that he rendered this small caricature of a fashionably dressed and carefully posed dandy enjoying a drink.

 

George Luks (1867-1933)

The Café Francis, ca. 1906

Oil on canvas

The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, Museum Purchase

Frame Loan Courtesy of Eli Wilner & Company

 

Luks evoked the Bohemian pleasures of nightlife in this daring painting that shows James B. Moore, lawyer and owner of the Café Francis, attending to one of the young companions whom he referred to as his "daughters." Moore is perhaps too solicitously removing the young woman's wrap, revealing her abundant physical charms. Glamorously attired in feathers and a low-cut dress, her inviting smile, along with the glimpse of a crowd and musician in the background, suggest an evening of frivolity to come.

 

The Café Francis was advertised as "New York's Most Popular Resort of New Bohemia" until it closed in 1908. The establishment competed with Mouquin's to draw the artistic and literary crowd (though it must have been a friendly competition, since Moore is also present in Glackens' painting At Mouquin's, hanging nearby). Moore's café served as a social hub for the urban realist painters who were also dubbed the "Café Francis School."

 

George Luks (1867-1933)

Pedro, ca. 1920

Oil on canvas

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection

 

As one of the best-known figures among the Ashcan artists and a member of "The Eight," Luks personally embodied some of the group's most controversial and celebrated Bohemian traits. He was known as a voluble storyteller, a hard drinker, and an all-around boisterous character. As a painter, Luks concentrated on bold images of New York street life, painted with thick, broad strokes. This slightly dangerous-looking subject, smoking and drinking in a café, boldly confronts the viewer from beneath the brim of his hat. The guitar suggests that he may be a performer in costume, adding a theatrical touch to the scene.

 

Alfred Maurer (1868-1932)

Café in Paris, ca. 1901

Oil on canvas

Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York

 

American Alfred Maurer spent nearly fifteen years in Paris, and during his first years there he created dark-toned and somewhat mysterious scenes, often of solitary women against the backdrop of Parisian leisure sites. The artist abruptly cropped the image at the right, making it unclear whether the seated woman is alone or with a companion. The crowd of patrons seen in the distance is set in contrast to the empty tables in the foreground, only intensifying her isolation.

 

While abroad, Maurer continued to show his works in the United States, where his realist works were admired by his colleagues among the Ashcan artists. He remained in contact with Henri and Glackens, and participated with them and Sloan in a New York group exhibition in 1901.

 

Alfred Maurer (1868-1932)

Le Bal Bullier, ca. 1901-3

Oil on canvas

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, SC 1951:283

 

Ashcan artists who went to Paris eagerly embraced the city's famous public social life. In this painting Maurer captured the lively atmosphere of a popular dance hall in the Latin Quarter. Maurer's dark, painterly style, use of silhouettes, and his abrupt cropping of the composition are conventions associated with realism, as well as with the snapshot quality of modern subjects. While the figures on the right are engaged in a lively dance, those on the left wander away with disaffected expressions conveying an almost cinematic impression, as if the viewer is witnessing both the exhilaration of the dance, and the emotional letdown afterward.

 

Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924)

The Band Concert, Luxembourg Gardens, 1893

Watercolor and pencil on paper

Ambassador and Mrs. Ronald Weiser

 

Prendergast was one of the first Americans to paint with the heightened palette and decorative rhythms associated with Post-Impressionism. Studying in Paris between 1891 and 1894, he was inspired by French avant-garde painters to create street subjects like this one. Prendergast's delicate watercolor offers a glimpse of one of the city's famous parks where fashionably dressed men and women enjoy conversation and drinks while listening to music. The musicians are a silhouette in the distance.

 

Though Prendergast's paintings were very different in style from those of his Ashcan School contemporaries, they admired his modern urban subjects. Prendergast was invited to participate in the controversial 1908 New York exhibition of "The Eight," forever associating him with that notorious event.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

McSorley's Bar, 1912

Oil on canvas

Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase

 

Everett Shinn (1876-1953)

The Bar at McSorley's, 1908

Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene A. Gargaro, Jr.

 

McSorley's Old Ale House, an Irish working-class bar on East Seventh Street, is known as the city's oldest continuously operating saloon, established in 1854 and still open today. It was famous for a floor strewn with sawdust, no stools, and walls papered with theater memorabilia, sporting prints, and programs. The proprietor, John McSorley, established a quiet, congenial, and exclusively male environment that attracted men of varied backgrounds and classes. This social latitude is signaled by the different types of clothing worn by the patrons in these two images. Sloan's figures can be identified as working-class men while Shinn's are more refined in dress.

 

McSorley's was a popular haunt of the Ashcan artists, and Sloan fondly referred to the bar as the "old standby." He took special care with this painting, making at least six sketches to develop the composition. Both his painting and Shinn's watercolor convey the place's all-male congeniality.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

Yeats at Petitpas', 1910

Oil on canvas

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund (32.9)

 

Sloan routinely depicted the places he frequented and knew best. This lively group portrait demonstrates his strong affection for Petitpas', a boarding house run by three French sisters from Brittany. Sloan's close friend John Butler Yeats (father of poet William Butler Yeats) boarded there and routinely held court. Sloan is furthest to the right, and Yeats is the bearded figure on the left. Seated to his right is biographer and literary historian Van Wyck Brooks. Sloan's wife Dolly faces us in a yellow dress. The jovial gathering of writers, painters, and poets in an informal setting evokes the pleasures of dining and the Bohemian life.

 

 

Entertainment: Fine and Performing Arts

 

At the turn of the twentieth century, New Yorkers enjoyed an increasing array of entertainment options away from home, ranging from more refined cultural venues such as the theater and art galleries, to popular entertainments like vaudeville, music halls, and movie houses. Amusements like vaudeville that had been off limits to decent women became more respectable, appealing to both working- and middle-class audiences. Crowds mingled in theaters and music halls and on roof gardens that provided light entertainment and cool breezes during the summer. The bright lights and costumes of the circus and carnival offered popular entertainment, as well as a rich source of imagery for artists.

 

The Ashcan artists were keenly interested in both the audiences on display and the performers on stage that comprised these lively spectacles of commercial leisure. They engaged in amateur theatricals themselves and socialized with many performers, sometimes portraying the popular celebrities of the day. They also performed for their own patrons in gallery and exhibition settings.

 

Unknown Photographer

Untitled (Star Theatre), 1883-1901

Toned gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

The New York Edison Company Photographic Bureau

Untitled (Night view of Broadway - north of 47th Street), 1917

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Photo Courtesy of Con Edison

 

Untitled (Orpheum Music Hall), 1904

Flyer

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

Unknown Artist

Untitled (Mutt and Jeff), undated

Offset lithograph

The New-York Historical Society, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

Vaudeville, the variety acts that delighted both working- and middle-class audiences, thrived in turn-of-the-century New York. Promoters assured audiences that their "high class" performances were entirely respectable, as is seen in the advertisements here. However, vaudeville would ultimately be supplanted as popular entertainment by moving pictures. As films became longer and more elaborate, entrepreneurs like Marcus Loew built larger, more luxurious theaters that looked like "legitimate" playhouses, rather than the crowded, shabby storefronts where short films were presented early on.

 

Live theater also enjoyed a strong following in New York. The Star Theater at the corner of 13th Street and Broadway presented traditional drama and opera in German and later in English. Ironically, the demolition of this famous legitimate playhouse in 1901 was recorded in time-lapse photography to create a famous short film that compressed the month-long process to just two minutes.

 

American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, New York

The Boys Think They Have One on Foxy Grandpa, But He Fools Them, 1902

1 minute, 10 seconds

Archival film from the collections of the Library of Congress

 

In the early twentieth century vaudeville still thrived in New York, but was gradually surpassed by movies as the most popular form of commercial entertainment. This comic film demonstrates the literal transition of a theatrical vaudeville act into a moving picture, as "Foxy Grandpa" shows up his young challengers with his playing and dancing. Urban audiences for early short films were broad and a lack of English was no barrier to enjoying these silent pictures.

 

Untitled (Playbill for New York Theatre and Roof Garden), 1904

Chromolithograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

Unknown Photographer

Untitled (Hammerstein's Olympia Theatre), ca. 1895

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Oscar Hammerstein I was a larger-than-life impresario who was passionately devoted to popularizing opera in America. He opened his colossal Olympia Theatre in 1895 on Broadway between 44th and 45th Streets. It soon bankrupted Hammerstein and reopened in 1898 under new ownership as the New York Theatre and Roof Garden, as is seen in the playbill here. However, the opening of the Olympia Theater is often credited with transforming Longacre Square, at the time lined with cheap hotels and brothels, into the glittering theater district in the area now known as Times Square.

 

Hammerstein recovered financially and built several more theaters in the heart of Times Square. In 1900 he opened the Republic Theatre next door to his Victoria Theatre on 42nd Street. Since these establishments often closed in the summer due to the stifling heat, he opened Hammerstein's Roof Gardens atop both theaters, featuring pastoral grottoes, ponds with real swans, and acrobatic aerial shows like the one depicted by Glackens nearby.

 

Archie Gunn (1863-1930)

New York Hippodrome, after 1905

Souvenir book

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

The Hippodrome, New York City, postmarked 1907

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

In 1905 the Hippodrome opened at Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets. Advertised as the world's largest theater, the stage could hold as many as 1,000 performers at a time, including elephants and horses. Spectators in the 6,000-seat hall were entertained by circuses, auto races, patriotic spectacles, and nautical extravaganzas. One of its creators described it as a "gigantic toy" for the masses, and the writer of this postcard agreed, calling the performance she attended the "most spectacular show I ever saw."

 

Unknown Artist

The Circus Parade March-Twostep, 1904

Sheet music

The New-York Historical Society Library Collections

 

Unknown Artist

Untitled (Direct to Barnum's Circus), undated

Chromolithograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked the golden age of the circus in the United States. This advertisement for Barnum's Circus (before he joined with partner James A. Bailey) shows a streetcar being pulled by horses that appear just as eager as the car's occupants to see the show. Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey shows were heralded with long, dazzling street parades that offered a taste of the spectacle; they were an amazing entertainment in their own right for those who couldn't afford a ticket. The music for The Circus Parade includes cues for clowns and acrobats, knights, equestrians, elephants, camels, and even Roman charioteers. Many of these performances were also brought indoors to venues like New York's Hippodrome, which is depicted nearby.

 

Selections from the Historical Society's extraordinary collection of circus posters are on display in the corridor as you exit the exhibition galleries.

 

Gifford Beal (1879-1956)

Waiting for the Show, ca. 1917

Oil on panel

Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Craven

 

Gifford Beal was especially devoted to decorative images of popular entertainments such as circuses and carnivals. In this painting Beal focused on the actors and acrobats before the show, rather than depicting the spectacle of their performance. Though dressed in glamorous, colorful costumes, they casually converse in small, intimate groups against a frieze-like background of passing riders and the fringe of a festive tent. By showing entertainers at their ease "backstage," Beal emphasized both the artifice of their performance and their status as workers producing amusement.

 

George Bellows (1882-1925)

Outside the Big Tent, 1912

Oil on canvas

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Gift of an anonymous donor (1928.39)

 

In the summer of 1912 a circus came to Bellows' hometown of Montclair, New Jersey, and his wife Emma observed that it "played to capacity audiences and was lots of fun but financially a big flop." She added, "I always said that George got more out of it than anyone else." This lively painting suggests that she was right. Bellows shows a well-dressed, middle-class crowd strolling the midway before cavorting carnival performers on a stage in the middle distance. The artist's fluid and painterly brushwork conveys the exciting environment of the nocturnal performance. The dramatic swath of intense light emphasizes the looming Ferris wheel, which had been a popular attraction ever since it was featured as the highlight of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893.

 

Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)

The Horn Players, ca. 1893

Oil on canvas

Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York

 

Though he painted in a different style from most of the Ashcan painters, Arthur B. Davies was a member of their circle, exhibiting with Henri and his colleagues at the historic 1908 exhibition of the group known as "The Eight." The Ashcan painters admired Davies for his independent approach. In this small sketch the artist captured a row of musicians performing before what is probably a scenic backdrop suggesting a bucolic landscape. Their dark attire sets off the gleaming metallic curves of the French horns, transforming figures and instruments into repeating, decorative elements that form their own quiet, lyrical rhythm.

 

Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958)

Juliana Force at the Whitney Studio Club, 1921

Oil on wood

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James S. Adams in Memory of Philip K. Hutchins (51.43)

 

The Whitney Studio Club, an exhibition and artists' space in a townhouse on Eighth Street, was founded in 1918 by patron and sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, an important supporter of the Ashcan artists. This depiction of formally dressed figures, perhaps at an opening reception, is du Bois' tribute to Whitney's dynamic assistant and adviser, Juliana Force, here depicted with her back to us in glamorous evening attire. In a witty meditation on seeing and being seen, du Bois studied her bare back and red hair, even as she herself scrutinized a painting on the wall. Force, who later served as the first director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, loyally supported and collected the work of "The Eight," du Bois, and other Ashcan artists.

 

Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958)

Chanticleer, ca. 1922

Oil on canvas

San Diego Museum of Art, Museum Purchase with funds from the Helen M. Towle Bequest

 

Art exhibitions -- like theaters and cafés -- were important social spaces in which to see and be seen. The wealthy art aficionados who regularly made the rounds of museum and gallery exhibitions were nicknamed "rounders." Here du Bois caricatured one such dandified gallerygoer, impeccably dressed in black with a top hat and cane. His jacket tails are flying so that he evokes the proud rooster denoted in the painting's title, Chanticleer. The potential client struts across the carpet of a luxuriously appointed gallery as the owner (perhaps John Kraushaar, du Bois' first dealer) waits to intercept him.

 

Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958)

The Pianist, ca. 1912-14

Oil on canvas

Private collection

 

After studying with Henri, du Bois turned to writing to make a living. He worked as a reporter for the New York American, and eventually he began to cover the music scene. Du Bois was considered less than successful as a music critic, perhaps because he spent his time making sketches and small paintings such as this one. The dark palette recalls Henri's influence, and du Bois probably worked on a small scale so that he could finish quickly. The composition is radically simplified, with the angles and sharp profile of the black piano providing a counterpoint to the formally dressed figures engrossed in an intimate musical experience.

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

The Country Fair, 1895-96

Oil on canvas

Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Samuel A. Lewisohn (51.213)

 

Glackens worked in Paris with Henri in 1895 and 1896, and the two enthusiastically embraced the French Impressionist practice of painting urban and rural amusements. The exact location of this scene is unknown, but it may be a neighborhood in or near Paris, rather than a completely rural area. Glackens depicted a public square as the site of a traveling fair, full of stalls, tents, and a stage. The stage and stalls are crowded with people, but Glackens' somber palette and the people streaming away on the left give a sense of foreboding. Their festivities may have been interrupted by an oncoming storm, indicated by the windswept tree at the upper left and the woman in the white dress at the center who appears to be trying to open an umbrella.

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

Hammerstein's Roof Garden, ca. 1901

Oil on canvas

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Museum Purchase (53.46)

Frame Loan Courtesy of Eli Wilner & Company

 

Hammerstein's Roof Garden at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue offered theater audiences both relief from summer heat and varied popular entertainments. In this painting Glackens depicted the dynamic of both the performers and the audience, as did Everett Shinn in the pictures nearby. Glackens added dramatic tension to his composition by focusing on the female tightrope walker, seen from below. She is vividly silhouetted in her blue dress against a background of blacks and whites, hovering above an audience of fashionably dressed men and women casually seated at café tables below.

 

Robert Henri (1865-1929)

Salome, 1909

Oil on canvas

Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts

 

In May 1909 Henri painted two full-length bravura portraits of a model dressed as the title character in Salome, Richard Strauss' 1905 opera based on Oscar Wilde's scandalous 1891 play. The opera shocked audiences with its explicitly sexual and violent nature, and was canceled after one performance at the Metropolitan Opera in 1907. Henri and his wife saw Salome performed at Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera House two years later. The musical high point of the performance is the famous "Dance of the Seven Veils," the subject of Henri's paintings. In this version the smiling temptress seems to part a white drape flanking her hips, suggesting removal of the last veil to reveal a daring expanse of bare midriff. The painting was rejected by the jury for the National Academy of Design's 1910 exhibition, and Henri's friend and fellow artist John Sloan surmised that the boldly painted figure with her "naked legs" was "too much for them."

 

Robert Henri (1865-1929)

Ruth St. Denis in the Peacock Dance, 1919

Oil on canvas

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Gift of the Sameric Corporation in memory of Eric Shapiro

 

Most of Henri's contemporaries were avidly interested in vaudeville and popular entertainments, but Henri himself preferred theater and especially dance. He sought out the noted performers of the day, including Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, another pioneer of modern dance. He was in the audience at the Palace Theater when St. Denis opened in February 1919 performing her famous solo, the exotic "Peacock Dance." St. Denis was deeply influenced by mysticism and Eastern culture, and the dance was based on a legend from India about a woman whose vanity caused her to be transformed into a peacock. Henri depicted her in a graceful, sinuous pose, her bare arms and her midriff contrasting with the lavish colors and textures of her costume. Unlike Salome, his earlier painting of another exotic dancer displayed nearby, this painting was well received at the National Academy of Design.

 

George Luks (1867-1933)

Top Three Sergeants, 1925

Oil on canvas

Detroit Institute of Arts, City of Detroit Purchase

 

Luks was particularly interested in music, and he featured musicians in several compositions from his late career. This multi-figure work was inspired by an impromptu visit from three neighboring art students. Even though none of them had any musical training, Luks posed two of his visitors with instruments and used an art magazine as sheet music in the hands of the "singer." Working with his typical zeal, Luks finished the painting in little more than three hours. His keen enthusiasm and his past observation of trained musicians transformed his models into convincing performers, whose close proximity embodies the production of musical harmony.

 

George Luks (1867-1933)

Artist and His Patron, ca. 1905

Oil on canvas

Private collection

 

One of the leading Ashcan painters, Luks was best known for images of rollicking street figures full of bluster and bravado. In contrast, this subdued meditation on the art marketplace is something of a surprise. The presumed artist on the right leans in toward the patron, who distances himself slightly from the artist with the sharp projection of his elbow. His face, like his intentions, remains hidden as he scrutinizes the works on display. The subtle tension suggested here between artist and patron evokes the social and economic ambiguity of an artist's life, a concern that was heightened for the Ashcan painters by their unconventional subjects.

 

Alfred Maurer (1868-1932)

Carrousel, ca. 1901-2

Oil on board

Brooklyn Museum, Gifts of Colonel Michael Friedsam, A. Augustus Healy, Alfred W. Jenkins, Mrs. Christian P. Roos, and Charles A. Schieren, by exchange, and John B. Woodward Memorial Fund (42.253)

 

While in France from 1900 to 1904 Maurer produced many paintings of modern Parisian leisure. His stay coincided with that of Ashcan painters Henri and Glackens, and they may have influenced Maurer to choose these subjects, both in New York and in Paris. Here Maurer showed an interest in social interaction, as urban amusements in public spaces attracted crowds that blurred class lines. He demonstrated this through different social types, from the top-hatted man with his companion in her fur-trimmed coat, to the shadowed woman in an apron with her market basket, all pictorially unified beneath the red canopy of the carousel.

 

Jerome Myers (1867-1940)

The Children's Theatre, ca. 1925

Oil on canvas

Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Miss Julia E. Peck

Frame Loan Courtesy of Eli Wilner & Company

 

Jerome Myers usually depicted the inhabitants and pastimes of the immigrant neighborhoods on New York's Lower East Side. He began his portrayals of street life perhaps as early as 1887, years before the Ashcan artists. Myers was friendly with Sloan and Henri. They supported Myers' work, though others criticized it as sentimental, perhaps because he tended to observe and record the happier moments of these difficult lives. Myers was especially drawn to the children of these neighborhoods, as is demonstrated in this lively painting of the youthful audience and performers at a local theater on Third Avenue that presented shows for children on summer afternoons.

 

Everett Shinn (1876-1953)

Tightrope Walker, 1924

Oil on canvas

The Dayton Art Institute, Ohio, Museum Purchase with funds provided by the James F. Dicke Family and the E. Jeanette Myers Fund, 1998.7

 

Shinn was fascinated by the performances and the performers that enlivened city nights, and he painted theatrical scenes for decades. By the 1920s his style had become more streamlined. Here the audience fades into the background as he captures the essentials of the performer, transformed into a dazzling white specter by the light of the chandelier, and the tension of the thin white wire that he carefully navigates. By the time of this painting Shinn had begun a new career as an art director for motion pictures.

 

Everett Shinn (1876-1953)

Theatre Box, 1906

Oil on canvas

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Gift of T. Edward Hanley, 1937

 

Everett Shinn (1876-1953)

The Orchestra Pit, 1907

Pastel on paper

The Westmoreland Museum of Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Gift of Dr. Walter Read Hovey

 

Souvenir Tray, 1890-1920

Metal

The New-York Historical Society, Gift of Bella C. Landauer, 2002.1.2123

 

Shinn's reputation as a painter of modern life was based on his lively theater subjects influenced by Degas, in which Shinn explored the perspectives of the performers and the audience. In Theatre Box the viewer is seated behind a well-dressed woman who observes the actress in the footlights, while a wall of faces in the audience seems to watch both them and the viewer of the painting. In The Orchestra Pit, Shinn peeks over the shoulder of a musician in the "pit" at the foot of the stage. The contorted actor onstage at the upper right is garishly spotlit in yellow. This point of view was not that of the audience, but represented what the other performers saw. Shinn may have recorded this image in Proctor's Theatre, known for "refined" vaudeville and popular dramas. A souvenir tray from Proctor's, emblazoned with the image of the actress Beatrice Morgan, is displayed here.

 

Everett Shinn (1876-1953)

Theatre Scene, ca. 1906-7

Oil on canvas

Manoogian Collection

 

Everett Shinn often painted theater scenes, depicting the dramatic spectacle of the performance on the stage, as well as the audience watching. Like the other realists, Shinn was drawn to lavish entertainments for the masses, such as popular dance-hall shows and musical reviews. He was a great admirer of Degas, and like the French artist, he often used sharp lighting contrasts and unusual vantage points to convey the thrilling experience of theatrical artifice. This painting places the viewer in the darkened hall with the audience, witnessing a live performance of costumed dancers on a huge brilliantly lit stage.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

Isadora Duncan, 1911

Oil on canvas

Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Abert, M1969.27

 

Sloan shared Henri's enthusiasm for the dance (see Henri's portraits of "Salome" and Ruth St. Denis nearby), and he greatly admired Isadora Duncan, often called "the mother of modern dance." After the first time Sloan saw her perform, he wrote in his diary: "She dances a symbol of human animal happiness as it should be, free from the unnatural trammels" with "the greatest human love of life." He painted this work just after attending his second Duncan performance. Unlike Henri, who portrayed costumed dancers carefully posed in the studio, Sloan captured Duncan in motion on a bare stage. Her head is thrown back and an arm is extended, suggesting the physical abandon and expressiveness she brought to her performances. Sloan was particularly pleased with this painting and exhibited it at every opportunity.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

Traveling Carnival, Santa Fe, 1924

Oil on canvas

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Gift of Mrs. Cyrus McCormick

 

Sloan surpassed all of his fellow Ashcan painters in his broad and democratic range of entertainment subjects. He first visited New Mexico in 1919 at Henri's suggestion. Sloan developed a strong connection to Santa Fe and returned annually for many years. The region's distinctive environment and the diversity of its people offered him a rich new source of subject matter, but this painting of the brilliantly lit midway of a carnival at night also recalls the scenes of street life that Sloan had painted in New York. He reported to his sister that "A show came to town with carousel and Ferris wheel and I made one of the best things I've ever done with it as a subject."

 

Eugene Speicher (1883-1962)

Portrait of Katharine Cornell as "Candida", ca. 1925-26

Oil on canvas

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Gift of Julia R. and Estelle L. Foundation Incorporated, Buffalo, 1950

 

Malvina Hoffman (1885-1966)

Katharine Cornell, 1961

White painted plaster with pink surface wash

The New-York Historical Society, Gift of the Estate of Miss Malvina Hoffman, through Barbara M. Hoffman, 1984.78

 

Eugene Speicher studied with Henri and the two became close friends. Speicher is best known for his portraits, and this painting of the American actress Katharine Cornell at the height of her career was hailed as a "great achievement" by fellow artist Charles Burchfield. Cornell was an accomplished dramatic actress known as "the first lady of the theater." She reigned over the theater world in New York and across the country in the twenties and thirties. Speicher produced this grand-manner portrait of Cornell in the title role of the clergyman's wife in George Bernard Shaw's 1894 comedy Candida. She left the stage in 1961 upon the death of her husband and collaborator, director Guthrie McClintic. That same year the sculptor Malvina Hoffman created this expressive plaster bust.

 

Maurice Sterne (1877-1957)

Entrance of the Ballet, ca. 1904

Oil on canvas

Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Ralph Harman Booth

 

Sterne is primarily known as a modernist sculptor, but this work shows his early formation as a painter of modern life subjects. Sterne had seen paintings by Degas while abroad, and like Everett Shinn, whose work is displayed nearby, he paid homage to the French master's ballet themes. Where Shinn's scenes adopt the perspective of an audience member seated at the orchestra level, Sterne's viewer is perched in a balcony seat with a commanding view of both the audience and the performers.

 

 

Parks and Public Spaces

 

Amidst New York's densely built environment, parks and other outdoor places became focal points for leisure activity. These public open spaces had been planned in the nineteenth century as part of an urban reformist vision to provide relief from crowded streets and living quarters. The Ashcan artists traveled the city, from Battery Park, at the city's southern tip, to High Bridge Park along the Harlem River. Such outdoor locations provided opportunities to observe the spectacle of public behavior by New Yorkers of many types and social classes.

 

Central Park was the prime locale in which to spend leisure time, offering New Yorkers then, as now, their best opportunity to commune with nature. As the subway expanded, the Park became accessible to a wider range of the city's populace. In addition to bucolic walks, visitors could gather to celebrate holidays and enjoy Sunday concerts and recreations. There, the Ashcan painters recorded their fellow citizens at different seasons socializing, promenading, and playing. They also found subjects in the city's smaller parks. Near several Ashcan artists' studios, Washington Square Park and Madison Square offered pedestrians a respite from busy vehicular traffic all around them. In addition, the artists recorded the leisure interludes of those gathered in outdoor, impromptu neighborhood retreats improvised on tenement stoops and by the waterfronts.

 

Unknown Photographer

Untitled (Sledding in Central Park), undated

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Gift of Mrs. Elihu Spicer, 1960-61

 

J.S. Johnston (1839-1899)

Untitled (Skating in Central Park, N.Y.), undated

Albumen photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

As these photographs attest, sledding and ice-skating were popular wintertime activities in Central Park. In 1900 a writer described the experience of the Park in winter, noting "Not only will the snow be interesting to contemplate, but the people one meets, and all the surroundings, have a new charm; for the snow has a distinctive way of bringing out angles and curves, and there are many chances of making unexpected discoveries."

 

Unknown Artist

In Central Park: Popular Waltz Song, 1905

Sheet music

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

Music Band, Central Park, New York City, undated

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

The vibrant green sheet music evokes the experience of nature that New Yorkers anticipated in Central Park. The song celebrates the experience of escape in the park: Come, dear, to Central Park. Come for a stroll with me while stars are peeping and cops are sleeping. The song also extols the Park as a more affordable alternative to beaches like Coney Island: You will hear them say Coney Island is fine, but the free park for mine when I want a lark, so a seat that is shady for me and "me lady" in Central Park. In addition to strolling and courting, New Yorkers (then as now) also enjoyed concerts in the Park, as is seen in this postcard.

 

George Bellows (1882-1925)

A Day in June, 1913

Oil on canvas

Detroit Institute of Arts, Lizzie Merrill Palmer Fund

 

In this complex multifigure composition, Bellows depicted a well-dressed crowd of men, women, and children enjoying a summer day on the lush lawn in Central Park. Although he recorded the teeming streets and docks of the city, Bellows was also drawn to the elite crowds that frequented tennis and polo matches, as well as the fashionable set lounging here in the meadows of the Park in the shadow of the Plaza Hotel. The elegant ladies are garbed in long, flowing, white summer outfits with hats and parasols that suggest their privileged social status. Bellows lived nearby, and the artist placed himself and his family in the left middle distance among those enjoying the summer day. He wears a dark tie and reclines at the lower left next to his wife, Emma.

 

Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)

Children Playing, ca. 1896

Oil on canvas

Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York

 

Davies was part of the Henri circle in the early twentieth century and one of the group called "The Eight." His work had little in common aesthetically with the realists, but they shared the notion of artistic independence from mainstream conventions of taste. Early in his career Davies occasionally produced directly observed scenes like this group of figures playing in a park, but he became best known for paintings with dreamlike allegories and mythical themes.

 

Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)

Twilight on the Harlem, ca. 1907

Oil on canvas

Collection Abby and Alan D. Levy, Los Angeles

 

A few public spaces in upper Manhattan provided bucolic relief for uptown urban inhabitants. One of these was High Bridge Park, which stretches along the Harlem River from West 155th Street to Dyckman Street. The park's center is the High Bridge, built from 1837 to 1848 to carry the Croton Aqueduct into Manhattan from the Bronx. This painting of the park is conceived in Davies' signature style, including the long, horizontal format with a low horizon line and the decorative friezelike tableau of trees and figures. Davies depicted a moonlit idyll that includes small vignettes of children playing, evening strollers, and dogs frolicking against the bridge's distinctive masonry arches.

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

Central Park, Winter, ca. 1905

Oil on canvas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, George A. Hearn Fund, 1921 (21.164)

 

Here Glackens celebrated the park as a year-round attraction for the city's population. In a palette of blues and blacks offset by the white snow, he pictured winter sledding, a pastime that New Yorkers enjoyed (and still do) even in the modest hills of Central Park. The artist also included cues to distinguish the range of social classes of all ages gathered for winter sport. In the foreground, a young girl seems immobilized by her bulky and expensive costume, while more informally dressed youngsters play vigorously nearby.

 

One contemporary observed such social distinctions in winter play: "Some little tots [pack] uneven snowballs and [throw] them at any one near by, screaming and rolling over for glee. But there is many a child so richly dressed that the nurse clings to it and chides lest the lovely garments get a little snow on them."

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

The Battery, ca. 1902-4

Oil on canvas

Collection Abby and Alan D. Levy, Los Angeles

 

The Battery, located at the southern tip of Manhattan, was originally the site for gun batteries and of Castle Clinton, a fortification for military defense. The historic structure was later adapted to many uses, serving as a theater called Castle Garden and as the federal immigration center before the opening of Ellis Island. The Battery was also a point of embarkation for the ferry to Staten Island. When Glackens painted this work, the round building had been refitted as the New York Aquarium. The open area around this cultural attraction offered lawns and promenade walkways with a breathtaking view of the harbor and the Hudson that made it a destination for city dwellers.

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

May Day, Central Park, ca. 1905

Oil on canvas

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum Purchase, Gift of Charles E. Merrill Trust with matching funds from the de Young Museum Society, 70.1

 

The holiday of May Day was widely observed in the early years of the twentieth century. Originally an ancient pagan rite of spring, the celebration for May Day involved anointing a queen and dancing around a maypole with intertwined colored ribbons, signifying the hope for a new love. In this painting, a ribbon-draped maypole is visible in the midst of the crowds under the tree in the foreground. A newspaper described how in May of 1903, "The park fairly bristled with youngstersPresently the grass was so strewn with white frocks that at a little distance it looked as if household linen laid out to bleach had suddenly taken to skipping about." By the late nineteenth century, May Day also commemorated the international workers' struggle to achieve fair labor practices. Elaborate celebrations of both kinds took place in New York City, particularly in Central Park.

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

Winter - Washington Square Park, 1912

Oil on canvas

Private collection

 

Washington Square, located at the foot of Fifth Avenue, and bounded by Waverly Place (Washington Square North) on the north and West Fourth Street (Washington Square South) on the south, was transformed from a potter's field to a parade ground, and later a public park, in 1826-27. The square was named to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Several Ashcan artists, including Glackens, had studios nearby in Greenwich Village. Here Glackens captured a corner of the snowy park. He did not include the iconic Washington Arch, seen in John Sloan's engraving hanging nearby, but focused rather on the urban spectacle of a busy intersection where pedestrians and vehicles cross the precinct, while others at leisure enjoy the park.

 

Robert Henri (1865-1929)

Winter Landscape (Central Park), 1902

Oil on canvas

Private collection

 

A solitary child trudges through the snow, trailing a sled behind, in what may be the northernmost borders of Central Park. Here Henri captured the experience of exploring the vast winter wonderland of the park. Contemporaries enjoyed the way in which a heavy snowfall transformed the terrain available to them there. One writer described how, "In every direction lead asphalt paths, wide enough for six, to which one must keep during most of the year. But a fall of snow opens the way to any place in the Park."

 

Leon Kroll (1884-1974)

Scene in Central Park, 1922

Oil on canvas

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Gift of Orrin Wickersham June

 

Kroll's view of the park in autumn is largely unpopulated, save a few figures bundled up against the cold. His elevated viewpoint emphasized the hilly vista of the park almost as a topographical site, in contrast to the ground level perspectives of Glackens, Shinn, and Bellows that focused upon the human occupation of this manmade landscape. The artist emphasized the curving pathways and looming hills that contain the lake, set against the backdrop of the skyscrapers beyond.

 

George Luks (1867-1933)

Winter - Highbridge (High Bridge Park), 1912

Oil on canvas

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, Purchase with Henry B. Scott Fund and funds from the Friends of Art, 36.8

 

In 1912, Luks and his second wife, Emma, relocated from lower Manhattan to a house in Highbridge, a middle-class residential area in the Bronx near High Bridge Park. The move offered fresh subject matter and Luks also brightened his palette around this time. In this painting Luks represented his new neighborhood as a winter playland for children; this buoyant and jovial view of urban existence marks a departure from his gritty views of tenement life on New York's Lower East Side.

 

Edward Manigault (1887-1922)

Procession, 1911

Oil on canvas

Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Gift of Ferdinand Howald (1931.208)

 

Edward Manigault is associated with the Ashcan School through his studies with Robert Henri, and also through their shared exhibition activity, including the influential Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910. While most of the Ashcan artists painted in a realist style, Manigault's approach was more decorative and abstracted. Here he presented the park as a flattened, multi-tiered space where horses, automobiles, and pedestrians ­ each contained in neatly divided zones ­ coexist in perfect equilibrium. Indeed, the landscape designers of the park had divided modes of traffic into a tripartite system for carriageways, bridle paths, and footpaths. This way, according to a description in a contemporary newspaper, "the enjoyment of one class of visitors [would] not be allowed to interfere with that of any other."

 

Jerome Myers (1867-1940)

Evening, 1919

Oil on canvas

Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, Museum Purchase. Gift of George B. Pratt (Class of 1893)

 

Jerome Myers (1867-1940)

Evening Recreation, 1920

Oil on canvas

Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Craven

 

Myers' signature subjects as a painter were the downtown tenements and immigrant communities where there were only limited options for outdoor recreation. Although the city's parks were open to all, there were many who could not afford to travel uptown from the tenement neighborhoods to Central Park. These populations sought relief from summer heat and socialized along the waterfronts close to home. In these works the artist portrayed a strong sense of camaraderie and community solidarity, as neighbors engage in conversation and children play in small groups. Myers, from a humble background himself, had a deep concern for the disadvantaged: "My love was my witness in recording these earnest, simple lives, these visions of the slums clothed in dignity, never to me mere slums but the habitations of a people who were rich in spirit and effort."

 

Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924)

In Central Park, New York, ca. 1900-3

Watercolor and graphite on wove paper

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Gift of an anonymous donor (1928.48)

 

Prendergast's bright colors and flattened forms suggest a richly hued tapestry, in contrast to the realism of the Ashcan painters, but he shared their embrace of contemporary subjects. In this work, Prendergast depicted Central Park as a highly manicured oasis with well-dressed children and adults seated on benches surrounding a fountain in a basin. One little girl walks a dog and another holds out her arms as though she is in the midst of twirling. These lively figures in their vibrant costumes create a sense of polite celebration as they decorously promenade before the screen of neatly pruned trees.

 

Everett Shinn (1876-1953)

Central Park, 1920

Oil on canvas

Mr. and Mrs. John Wallace

 

Like Kroll's 1922 painting Scene in Central Park hanging nearby, Shinn emphasized the actual terrain itself in this briskly painted work. The massive ledges that are part of the bedrock underlying the park assert themselves into the manmade landscape, providing a slide for the children at play in the foreground. In the sunny distance at the far left, crowds dancing around maypoles suggest that Shinn is also documenting the communal celebration of that traditional summer holiday.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

Spring, Madison Square, 1905-6

Oil on canvas

Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ruth C. Wallerstein Fund purchase (57.1.2)

 

During this period Sloan lived near Madison Square on West Twenty-third Street at the southern edge of the Tenderloin district, an area that saw much public commingling of classes in the streets and squares. In this painting, he looked south across Madison Square towards the Flatiron Building, whose tall profile looms through the branches of trees in spring bud. As an urban realist, Sloan was equally drawn to the bustle of the streets and the more bucolic views of the city gained from New York's parks and squares.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

Washington Arch, 1923

Etching

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, James Boyd Collection of New York City Etchings, Gift of James Boyd presented in memory of his wife Agnes Gray Boyd

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

Swinging in the Square, 1912

Etching

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, James Boyd Collection of New York City Etchings, Gift of James Boyd presented in memory of his wife Agnes Gray Boyd

 

John Sloan lived and worked near Washington Square Park from 1912 to 1935, and he often depicted subjects from the neighborhood, as seen in these two etchings. In both, he studied contemporary leisure pastimes as a way to explore physical types. Children play leapfrog, run a hoop, and swing, while adults stroll and relax on nearby benches. Sloan also signaled the different classes to be found in urban spaces through his characterizations. For example, in Swinging in the Square, the simply dressed men on the park bench are in close proximity to a wealthy, well-dressed Fifth Avenue socialite with a feathered hat and high heels.

 

Robert Spencer (1879-1931)

Courtyard at Dusk, ca. 1915

Oil on canvas

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ronald MacDougall

 

While not formally affiliated with the Ashcan School artists, Robert Spencer may have studied with Henri in New York at the New York School of Art. He left New York in 1903 and settled at New Hope, Pennsylvania soon after. For decades his primary subject matter was New Hope mill workers ­ many of them women ­ and the old textile mills that were picturesque remnants of the once-booming industrial fabric of the Delaware Valley region. Nevertheless, Spencer famously denied that these works had any political significance. "I don't care whether the buildingmakes automobile tires or silk shirts," he told a critic. "It is the romantic mass of the buildingand the life in and about it that count." Courtyard at Dusk demonstrates Spencer's response to both elements, as women gather in a tenement courtyard at day's end, seeking the cool evening air and social contact within their close community.

 

 

Beaches and the Outdoors

 

During the second half of the nineteenth century, seaside resorts developed into important leisure sites. Ashcan artists illustrated the crowded New York beaches and the coasts of New England and Europe alike. Their works functioned as commentaries on the intermingling of classes and genders at these popular destinations. The relaxation of social restrictions made for lively and provocative subject matter.

 

In New York City, advances in transportation facilitated rapid travel to outlying locales. New Yorkers flocked to the beaches and amusement parks near the city to escape the summer heat. At Coney Island, raucous and racy behavior on the beach and on the thrilling rides earned the Brooklyn resort the sobriquet, "bedlam by the sea." South Beach on Staten Island and Rockaway in Queens were also popular sites for day trips. For those who could not afford the subway or train fare, the city's waterfronts afforded some relief from the summer heat.

 

The seasonal ritual of excursions from the city to the countryside had an even longer history for the middle-class urban dweller, and particularly for artists. Many Ashcan painters spent considerable time away from New York during the summer months. Sometimes for extended periods, they congregated in artist colonies or at rustic destinations in the cooler climates of upstate New York and New England, where they produced work inspired by outdoor leisure subjects.

 

Helter Skelter, Luna Park, Coney Island, N.Y., ca. 1911

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

The Crowd that Met Me on the Boardwalk, Coney Island, N.Y., undated

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Pool in Steeplechase, Coney Island, N.Y., undated

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Scene in Luna Park, Coney Island, N.Y., postmarked 1906

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

By 1900 Coney Island drew 300,000 to half a million visitors on summer weekends and holidays. These postcards celebrate the area as a playland of amusements and fantastical architecture. Owner George Tilyou called Steeplechase Park "the most enchanting and magnetic funmaking resort in the world," noting that it "guaranteed ten hours' fun for ten cents." Steeplechase Park was established in 1897, Luna Park opened shortly after in 1903, and Dreamland in 1904. The lights of Coney Island were so brilliant that the distant glow was the first thing that immigrants saw when they arrived in the New York harbor at night. Sending postcards like these was a universally popular seashore pastime; on a single day in early September of 1906, 200,000 postcards were mailed.

 

Unknown Artist

Down at Rockaway: Song & Chorus Waltz, 1904

Sheet music

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

This sheet music alludes to an important beach pastime -- dancing. A German immigrant who frequented Rockaway noted, "If we go on a boat we dance all the way there and all the way back, and we dance nearly all the time we are there." The chorus of the song celebrates the lighthearted escape of Rockaway: Singing and dancing all day long, everyone's humming a favorite song, down at Rockaway you'll hear the people say, if you work hard all week, why Sunday's a treat, down at Rockaway.

 

Take a trip to Yorktown on the mammoth steamer "Rosedale", 1907

Broadside

The New-York Historical Society Library Collections

 

This broadside advertises a steamboat ride along the coast as a leisurely escape from the city. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, clubs, unions, and other organizations sponsored picnics and excursions like this one.

 

F. Gilbert Edge

The Sunday World, June 7th, 1896

Newspaper supplement

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

This cover of The Sunday World celebrates the racy sub-culture of popular seaside resorts like Coney Island. A young woman in a bathing suit poses provocatively, smoking a cigarette and dancing by the waves. She is surrounded by objects associated with the beach -- a bathing suit in a box, cigarettes, and a novel. In the background, a rising sun gleams with devilish eyes, hinting at the raucous behavior that occurred at Coney Island, a site where different classes mixed and traditional rules of decorum were loosened.

 

Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)

Rube and Mandy at Coney Island (3 parts), 1903

3 parts, total 12 minutes, 18 seconds

Archival film from the collections of the Library of Congress

 

This film follows the adventures of Rube and Mandy, a young couple experiencing Coney Island. The first scenes show the couple entering Steeplechase Park, where they ride the steeplechase, cross the rope bridge, and ride on yoked cows. Later the pair head to Luna Park where they ride the railway, "shoot the chutes," and ride a boat. Next, the couple enter "The Bowery" section of the park, where they are waylaid by a fortuneteller who fails to get them inside to see his attraction. Though we do not actually see the pair drinking, their behavior towards the end of the film suggests intoxication, as they attempt to ring the gong with the mallet and stuff hot dogs into each other's faces.

 

Souvenir Tray, 1891-1910

Metal

The New-York Historical Society, Gift of Bella C. Landauer, 2002.1.3200

 

This souvenir tray titled "Young's Ocean Pier" from Atlantic City, New Jersey depicts beach activities at the largest pier of its day. At the top is an image of owner and entrepreneur "Captain" John Lake Young. Seaside entertainments are displayed in vignettes around the rest of the tray surface: a uniformed band plays music; people sunbathe, dance, ride roller coasters, and are entertained at an aquarium. At lower right is a fish haul; Captain Young pulls in a large net from the pier and wows his audiences with the numbers and types of sea creatures arising from the depths.

 

George Bellows (1882-1925)

Forty-two Kids, 1907

Oil on canvas

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund (31.12)

 

This painting captures the youthful quest for affordable amusement in the sweltering, overcrowded city, as boys dive, tussle, strut, smoke, urinate, splash, and loll about in the nude on an abandoned pier, probably on the East River. While today we might read the painting as a celebration of childish fun, the term "kid" was used in 1907 to refer to boisterous working-class youth who lived in tenements. A newspaper cartoon of Forty-two Kids, published when the painting was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1908, illuminates how the subject was understood in its day. As a policeman rushes towards the group at the left, one boy shouts "Cheese it Fellers ­ Der Cops!" New York officials tried to ban unsupervised river swimming and encourage the practice only in designated areas, but the lazy, stolen swim persisted as an urban delight.

 

Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)

Every Saturday, ca. 1895-96

Oil on canvas

Brooklyn Museum, Gift of William A. Putnam (12.92)

 

In this lyrical early painting Davies depicted a trio of ladies enjoying a bucolic interlude, strolling beside a duck pond in the country. The rural site might have been Congers, New York, where Davies occasionally spent time with his wife and family. The wide gray sky and the accent colors of the figures' costumes create a quiet poetic mood. The forms are silhouetted as a decorative procession against the background, and the woman holding an umbrella turns toward us as if inviting the viewer to partake in their country idyll.

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

Chateau-Thierry, 1906

Oil on canvas

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, Gift of the Virginia Steel Scott Foundation

 

In 1906, Glackens painted a group of pictures while traveling in France on his three-week honeymoon. Among them was this lively bathing scene, which depicts the pleasant town on the River Marne that he and his new wife, Edith, visited with their friend and fellow painter Alfred Maurer. Glackens captured the town's lively charm, writing to Robert Henri, "We spent one day at a place called Chateau-Thierry. I certainly like those little river towns there is lots of go about them." He included a likeness of himself and Edith in bathing costumes crossing the bridge, and Maurer is depicted in a red bathing suit near the river's edge.

 

Robert Henri (1865-1929)

At Far Rockaway, 1902

Oil on canvas

Private collection

 

Henri's diary records a trip to Far Rockaway Beach in southernmost Queens on July 13, 1902, and he planned this composition the following day. Under a brilliant blue summer sky, Henri depicted the popular urban resort pavilion crowded with people, though with its family groups and strollers, the scene seems much more genteel than some contemporary descriptions. William Dean Howells recalled a more raucous population from his trip to Rockaway Beach with "swarms and heaps of people in all lolling and lying and wallowing shapes and the water is full of slipping and shouting and shrieking human creatures it is not picturesque, or poetic, or dramatic; it is queer."

 

Robert Henri (1865-1929)

Picnic at Meshoppen, PA, 1902

Oil on canvas

The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Gift of the William A. Coulter Fund

 

In the summer of 1902 Henri spent a month in the town of Black Walnut in rural northern Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Linda, and another couple went to nearby Meshoppen on the Fourth of July, and their outing inspired this painting. The artist worked up the subject from a sketch three months later, and highlighted the scene with accents of red, white, and blue, perhaps as a patriotic reference to the holiday excursion. Henri created an image of middle-class celebrants decorously enjoying the holiday, focusing on the well-dressed couple in the foreground in private conversation beside the massive trunk of a giant tree that dominates the composition.

 

Rockwell Kent (1882-1971)

Croquet (The Beach Party), ca. 1906-7

Oil on canvas

Manoogian Collection

 

In his early career Rockwell Kent was a part of a close-knit group of Henri students who shared his interest in depicting contemporary leisure activities. This charming seaside interlude was an unusual subject for Kent, given his radical socialist politics. Croquet had been imported from England in the 1860s and quickly swept the country since, according to a contemporary commentator, the game served both sporting and social functions: "its paraphernalia was simple and readily set up anywhere, and as a courting game few have surpassed it." Since croquet required little physical exertion it was socially acceptable for women to participate with men, rather than being relegated to the role of observers.

 

Leon Kroll (1884-1974)

In the Country, 1916

Oil on canvas

Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Special Membership and Donations Fund with a contribution from Mr. J.J. Crowley

 

Kroll met Robert Henri through George Bellows and quickly became part of the Henri circle. He was initially recognized for his urban scenes of New York, but in the 1910s he began producing multifigure compositions such as In the Country, one of his most important works. In 1916, Henri had suggested that Kroll visit Bellows, who was spending the summer in Camden, Maine with his family. The two artist friends worked together while renting summer homes on adjoining properties. Kroll celebrated Bellows and his family in this group portrait set outside their country house as a vision of domestic harmony in a bucolic setting.

 

Richard Hoe Lawrence (1858-1936)

Untitled (Bathers on the sand), undated

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Richard H. Lawrence Photograph Collection, Gift of Mrs. Richard Hoe Lawrence, 1950

 

Richard Hoe Lawrence (1858-1936)

Untitled (Bathers on the shore), undated

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Richard H. Lawrence Photograph Collection, Gift of Mrs. Richard Hoe Lawrence, 1950

 

In these photographs sunbathers and swimmers of all ages revel on the shore. Contemporary physicians recommended appropriate beach dress: for men, woolen or flannel suits and broad brimmed hats; and for women, a blouse with loose-fitting sleeves and pantaloons cuffed at the knees. Bathing suits tended to be maroon or dark blue, colors that were believed less likely to be spotted or marked by the salt water.

 

Ernest Lawson (1873-1939)

Boys Bathing, ca. 1908-10

Oil on canvas

Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Russell Hopkinson (62.80)

 

Ernest Lawson exhibited in the famous 1908 Macbeth Gallery group show of "The Eight," and he continued to be associated with the Ashcan School artists socially and through exhibitions. However, his paintings and subject matter were distinct from theirs; he generally worked with a brighter palette and with impressionistic brushwork, as can be seen here. Like his contemporaries, Lawson enjoyed periodic escapes from New York City, and he may have produced this painting while in Branchville, Connecticut at the home of his early mentor, American Impressionist J. Alden Weir. In sharp contrast to the murky waters and riotous crowd of Bellows' Forty-two Kids, displayed nearby, Lawson depicted young boys decorously playing in a shallow river by a country road.

 

Alfred Maurer (1868-1932)

Rockaway Beach, ca. 1901

Oil on canvas

Curtis Galleries, Inc., Minneapolis

 

Like Henri and Glackens, European-trained Alfred Maurer embraced leisure subjects. Rockaway Beach in Queens, also referred to as "The Rockaways," was advertised as less crowded and easier to navigate than Coney Island, while possessing "superior comforts." The Rockaways' beaches were generally populated by the middle-class families that Maurer depicted here, signaled by the standing couple at the left with their baby. A colorful crowd sits along the beach, with the complex structure of a towering wooden roller coaster at the water's edge, probably a feature of the amusement park that opened there in 1901. Observing the figures from the back at an oblique angle, Maurer assumed the role of voyeur, recording his contemporaries with an interested eye from the edge of the scene.

 

Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924)

Low Tide, ca. 1895-97

Oil on panel

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Gift of Mrs. Charles Prendergast (86.18.40)

Frame Loan Courtesy of Eli Wilner & Company

 

Prendergast devoted most of his work to leisure themes, often painting seaside views of resort populations. Between 1895 and 1897 Prendergast executed a series of paintings of beach-goers along the Massachusetts coastline at Revere Beach and Nahant. These beaches were a popular destination for urban crowds from Boston, so much so that locals were often dismayed to find that "one's own particular beach is swarming and useless, one's especial reef is populated and hideous, nay, one's very crevice in the rock is discovered and mortgaged to current flirtations." Here a group of boys and girls has camped out in the shelter of a moored sailboat whose looming shape dominates the foreground. Prendergast's deliberately flattened composition and his vibrant color scheme evoke a decorative tapestry while retaining the local color and narrative of a sunny day at the beach

 

Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924)

Study St. Malo, No. 32, ca. 1907

Oil on panel

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Gift of Mrs. Charles Prendergast (91.18.26)

 

Prendergast's connection to Henri and the Ashcan painters dates to 1902, when Henri proclaimed that "Prendergast is one of us -- a very personal and original painter -- quite unlike anyone else." In 1908 Prendergast participated in the controversial independent exhibition of the group of Ashcan painters called "The Eight" in New York's Macbeth Galleries. Among his works there were ten small oils depicting the French resort of St. Malo, including this one. Prendergast produced many images of this picturesque village on the English Channel in Brittany during an extended stay there. His brilliant palette, summary brushwork, and painterly textures would certainly have announced the artist to his New York peers as a progressive "original."

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

South Beach Bathers, ca. 1907-8

Oil on canvas

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Gift of the T.B. Walker Foundation, Gilbert M. Walker Fund, 1948 (1948.27)

 

South Beach, on the eastern shore of Staten Island, was home to amusement parks, arcades, and summer bungalows. This composition was inspired by Sloan's day trip there in June 1907. He explained that since South Beach was less congested than Coney Island he had a "better opportunity for observation of individual behavior." Sloan recreated his observations in these lively seaside vignettes. The standing woman in a chic bathing costume boldly inviting the stares of men nearby is one of a jovial group of young people smoking cigarettes as they picnic on hot dogs and steamed crabs. The easy familiarity between the intertwined figures of men and women suggests rather shocking behavior. In contrast the woman and little girl beside them, fully dressed in pale summer colors, appear proper and respectable. Sloan exhibited this work in the traveling exhibition of the landmark show of "The Eight" Ashcan painters at New York's Macbeth Galleries.

 

 

Sports

 

Sporting activity became a popular part of American leisure life by the turn of the twentieth century. Spectator sports such as baseball, horse racing, and boxing appealed to mass audiences, while tennis and polo attracted an elite following. The general public also participated in some of these pastimes, along with other recreations such as ice- and roller-skating, and the more novel pursuit of motoring.

 

In 1899, Theodore Roosevelt advocated the active "strenuous life" as a new form of popular masculinity. Progressive social thinkers similarly promoted health through physical exercise, and competitive sports were organized to engage urban youth. While males still dominated the practice of athletics, there were increasing opportunities for females who considered themselves "modern" women to participate in the sporting life.

Many of the Ashcan artists, particularly their leader Robert Henri, embraced the new athletic "manly" ethos; some, like George Bellows, participated in sports, as well as being avid spectators. As painters, they were drawn to the spectacle of sometimes brutal physical competitions and to the colorful crowds in attendance. Their works depict a broad spectrum of sporting subjects, running the gamut from the highly charged masculine environments of boxing and wrestling matches to the more genteel recreations of riding, tennis, and skating.

 

Unknown Artist

Let's Get the Umpire's Goat, 1909

Sheet music

The New-York Historical Society Library Collections

 

Greater New York Base Ball Club (official score card), 1905

Reproductive photograph and offset printing

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

The American Baseball League was established around 1900, and quickly professionalized the sport. This scorecard for the 1905 season allowed a fan to follow his team through the season. The American Baseball League also established the umpire as the "absolute master of the field during a game," as one contemporary noted. The focus on the umpire led to jeering from the crowds, who expressed themselves freely when they disagreed with calls. In that spirit, the song Let's Get the Umpire's Goat includes the lyrics We'll yell, "Oh, you robber! Go somewhere and die, back to the bush you've got mud in your eye, oh what an awful decision! Why don't you put spectacles on?" Let's holler like sin, and then our side will win, when the umpire's nanny is gone.

 

Unknown Artist

Auto-ist's Delight, 1904

Sheet music

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Speedway, Central Park, New York City, undated

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

In 1899 automobile "parades" and races were a common sight in New York. Motoring was one of the most exclusive hobbies of the period; cars cost between $4,000 and $6,000, ten times the annual income of an unskilled nonunion worker. Motorcars were restricted to specific roads in Central Park, and one is visible in this early postcard. The song Auto-ist's Delight celebrates the car and the convenience and adventure that it brings, as we wend our sporty way thro' this world of delightful autoness.

 

George M. Schultz

Untitled (Prints from films of polo players at Devon, PA), ca. 1898

Gelatin silver photographs

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Polo appeared in America in the 1880s, but it was not established as an organized sport until the early twentieth century. Contemporaries likened it to boxing for the elite because, while it required physical strength and prowess, it was also expensive. Polo was said to call for masculine characteristics which one writer judged to "make a man successful in any walk in life. Dash, stamina, a cool head, good temper, a quick eye, [and] the unselfishness which prompts a man to play for the side and not for himself." These photographs record a match in Pennsylvania, but polo was also popular in areas around New York, such as Lakewood, New Jersey, where Bellows encountered the sport.

 

Marquis of Queensberry Rules, undated

Newspaper clipping

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

World's Welterweight Championship, 1926-27

Postcard

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

Boxing has a long history in New York, and the sport was modernized in the late 1860s with the adoption of the "Marquis of Queensberry Rules," which required boxers to wear gloves. Boxing was widely popular with urban male audiences, but the sport was not deemed acceptable for polite society. In 1911 a journalist commented that "a great many turbulent and otherwise undesirable persons" attended matches. The journalist also insisted that boxing was only "practiced by men who do nothing else for a living." However, the men who fought in the matches were recognized as "champions" and celebrities in their own right, as this postcard demonstrates.

 

Great $15,000 Race, Coney Island Jockey Club, 1899

Broadside

The New-York Historical Society Library Collections

 

Unknown Artist

Lights and Shadows of Horse Racing, 1890

Reproductive photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

Horseracing was popular and actively promoted, as this broadside suggests. However, numerous articles and images warned against the "racing evil" of gambling on horses. The flyer depicts crowds filling the racetrack and lining up to gamble, portrayed not as people, but caricatured as donkeys. The story is told of an individual from his contentment in his happy home, to the track where he spends all of his money and ends up a sorry donkey, "one of the victims of horseracing." A narrative on the reverse side traces this progression. In a similar vein, one contemporary writer criticized "the greedy alliance of leading New York Millionaires with professional gamblers, by which millions of dollars are harvested annually from the public under a pretence of improving the breed of horses."

 

George Bellows (1882-1925)

Polo at Lakewood, 1910

Oil on canvas

Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Columbus Art Association Purchase (1911.001)

 

In 1910 Bellows' new patron, Joseph Thomas, arranged for him to visit the George Gould estate in Lakewood, New Jersey, where polo matches were a great enthusiasm of the well-to-do. Bellows was swept up in the visual spectacle of the environment, the game, and the audience. He recounted, "I've been making studies of the wealthy game of polo as played by the ultra rich. And let me say that these ultra rich have nerve tucked under their vest pocket. It is a great subject to draw, fortunately respectable." Bellows considered this painting his best to date, brilliantly capturing in bold, fluid strokes the near collision of riders on the field that signals the thrill of the sport, as well as the "nerve" of the players.

 

George Bellows (1882-1925)

Tennis at Newport, 1920

Oil on canvas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967 (67.187.121)

 

Tennis was introduced in America in the mid-1870s, and it gained widespread attention in 1881 when the United States National Lawn Tennis Association, formed in New York, held the first national tournament in Newport. Bellows, a tennis enthusiast, spent the summer of 1919 just a few miles away in Middletown, Rhode Island. While visiting Newport he composed sketches of tennis tournaments that resulted in four oil paintings, at least one drawing, and two lithographs. In this painting he depicted a doubles lawn-tennis tournament overseen by observers from both sidelines. Compressing the game itself into a narrow zone between the passive well-dressed spectators, Bellows conveyed the sedate atmosphere and social rituals of an elite tennis club. The slanting light of the late afternoon sun transforms the event into an almost otherworldly tableau.

 

George Bellows (1882-1925)

Dempsey and Firpo, 1924

Oil on canvas

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Purchase, with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (31.95)

 

Boxing became widely popular when it was legalized in the early twentieth century, and in the 1920s Jack Dempsey emerged as a celebrated champion. Bellows was commissioned by the New York Evening Journal to cover the title match at the Polo Grounds in September 1923 between the favored Dempsey and Luis Angel Firpo, the first Hispanic challenger for the world heavyweight title. Bellows captured the event at its high point, when Firpo unexpectedly knocked Dempsey from the ring. After a long (and disputed) slow count to nine, Dempsey recovered and was able to knock out Firpo in the second round to win the title. Bellows recalled that "When Dempsey was knocked through the ropes he fell in my lap. I cursed him a bit and placed him back in the ring with instructions to be of good cheer."

 

George Bellows (1882-1925)

Club Night, 1907

Oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., John Hay Whitney Collection 1982.76.1

 

Bellows' well-known boxing scenes capture the dramatic tension and violent physicality of this spectator sport practiced, at first, beyond the fringes of respectability. At the time Bellows painted this picture, boxing in public was still illegal. Bouts took place in underground clubs that had an illicit and aggressively masculine atmosphere. In this painting Bellows emphasized the brutal point of contact between the two opponents, the exertion of their power, and the raucous energy of the crowd. Many spectators appear from their clothing to be workingmen, but those in the front row are well dressed, indicating that men from all classes attended these events.

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

Skating Rink, New York City, ca. 1906

Oil on canvas

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Meyer P. Potamkin and Vivian O. Potamkin, 2000 (1964-116-7)

Frame Loan Courtesy of Eli Wilner & Company

 

Roller-skating was introduced to America in 1863, and within twenty years public rinks had opened in many major cities. Roller-skating particularly attracted young middle-class men and women. This painting was inspired by an outing that Glackens, Henri, Ernest Lawson, James Moore, and May James Preston took in April 1906. It is not known exactly which New York rink that Glackens depicted, but the skaters' fine suits, long dresses, and elaborate hats suggest that it was frequented by a fashionable set. Glackens reported that "I was the first to fall and it was a good one. My whole left hip will be black and blue in the morning."

 

William Glackens (1870-1938)

Skaters, Central Park, ca. 1912

Oil on canvas

Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts, Purchase with the Nancy Everett Dwight Fund

Frame Loan Courtesy of Eli Wilner & Company

 

Ice-skating first came into vogue in New York City's Central Park in the late 1850s, where, at first, male and female skaters were separated. This practice had been eliminated by 1870. As the popularity of skating increased, members of the upper class formed clubs and opened private rinks. However, by the turn of the century ice-skating was widely enjoyed by both male and female participants, as can be seen in this panoramic view of colorful crowds on the frozen lake in Central Park.

 

John Grabach (1886-1981)

Taking the Hurdles, undated

Oil on panel

Manoogian Collection

 

Horseracing has a long history in New York, and the spectator sport enjoyed a renaissance at the turn of the century with the opening of four new tracks: Aqueduct, Empire City, Jamaica, and Belmont. The muckraker David Graham Philips attributed this building boom to "our new crop of idle rich, with [their] passion for aping the aristocracy of Europe." Indeed, in this painting Grabach presents racing as a thrilling (and dangerous) spectacle staged before a largely oblivious high-society crowd. Nevertheless, the wealthy were also joined by many others at the tracks, since crowds of 30,000 to 40,000 turned out for major events. While betting on horse races was prohibited by law, bookmakers operated openly in betting sheds at the tracks, and more discreetly in hundreds of pool halls throughout the city.

 

Robert Henri (1865-1929)

Portrait of Miss Leora M. Dryer in Riding Costume, 1902

Oil on canvas

LeClair Family Collection

 

Early in his career Henri struggled to decide between painting scenes of the city or images of its inhabitants. He ultimately chose portraiture, and in the early twentieth century he executed several notable full-length paintings of women in dark, monochromatic palettes. Henri asked his friend Leora Dryer to pose for him in riding costume. The device suggested that she was a "modern woman" who participated in activities that were traditionally the purview of men, and gave the artist an opportunity to demonstrate his skill as a figure painter on a large scale.

 

Walt Kuhn (1877-1949)

Polo Game, ca. 1914

Oil on canvas

Private collection

 

Walt Kuhn, a colleague of Henri's, was celebrated as a painter, illustrator, writer, and vaudeville producer. He also helped to organize the controversial 1913 Armory Show, which introduced Americans to radical new art movements in Europe. Kuhn studied in Europe from 1901 to 1903 and this painting demonstrates his contact there with avant-garde ideas about painting. The polo players and their steeds are reduced to an almost abstract simplicity, while the crowd in the stands is interpreted as a dazzling tapestry of kaleidoscopic colors.

 

Bryon Photography

Central Park, Public Tennis Courts, undated

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections

 

Richard Hoe Lawrence (1858-1936)

Untitled (Tennis players), undated

Gelatin silver photograph

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Richard H. Lawrence Photograph Collection, Gift of Mrs. Richard Hoe Lawrence, 1950

 

Tennis became the game of choice for the social elite in the late nineteenth century after the Lawn Tennis Association was formed in 1881. The Association created standards for play and also set up competitions. As these photographs suggest, attending the matches was also a popular pastime in the city.

 

George Luks (1867-1933)

Boy with Baseball, ca. 1925

Oil on canvas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Edward Joseph Gallagher III Memorial Collection, Gift of Edward Joseph Gallagher, Jr., 1945 (54.10.2)

 

Baseball was a New York sport from its beginnings, as organized clubs played in the city in the 1830s. According to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the rules of the game as we know it were first set down in 1845 and adopted by a club called the New York Knickerbockers. This painting alludes to the sport's enduring popularity. The young sitter seems composed, but his fists balled in his pockets suggest that he can barely keep still, perhaps in his impatience to get back to his game.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

Gray and Brass, 1907

Oil on canvas

Dr. Karen A. and Mr. Kevin W. Kennedy Collection

 

As a leading producer of carriages, New York became an early center of automobile production, ownership, and racing in the early twentieth century. Wealthy New Yorkers embraced the automobile, though many thought it a foolish fancy. Sloan was inspired by watching the traffic on Fifth Avenue to capture what he called the "pomp and circumstance that marked the wealthy in the touring car." He satirized the occupants of this Packard automobile as corpulent, overdressed, and ostentatious. In contrast, modestly dressed pedestrians seated beneath the trees lining the avenue gawk at the flamboyance of the vehicle and its passengers.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951)

Fishing for Lafayettes, 1908

Oil on linen

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Huber

 

Sloan happened upon some locals trying to catch small fish called lafayettes (named for the famous French general), and sketched this composition from direct experience. In the painting, he captured details of this informal waterfront pastime, such as the makeshift fishing gear resting on the pier, and the motley characters of varying types engaged in the shared communal pursuit of urban fishing.

 

Unknown Artist

What Good is Water, When You're Dry?, 1910

Sheet Music

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

Unknown Artist

Every Day Will be Sunday When the Town Goes Dry, 1918

Sheet music

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

Unknown Artist

Whoa January (You're going to be Worse Thank July), 1920

Sheet music

The New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera

 

The temperance movement gained momentum in the early twentieth century, and growing ambivalence over the high social costs of drinking is traced in the music of the day. A man encourages his dinner companion to drink water instead of alcohol, but she and the waiter respond in chorus, What Good is Water, When You're Dry? In December 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting "intoxicating liquors," and the song Every Day Will Be Sunday When the Town Goes Dry laments how soon At the table d'hote with Lola they will serve us Coca Cola. Prohibition went into effect on January 16, 1920, and the cover of the song Whoa January anticipates the inevitable, as many restaurants and saloons collapsed. In New York they were quickly replaced by "speakeasies," and with them, corruption and organized crime. The new underground culture blurred social boundaries, as high society elites in search of liquor associated with gangsters and entertainers at these illicit sites. Prohibition was eventually repealed in 1933, but it had already wrought irrevocable changes to the leisure life of the city, for better and worse.

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