Wednesday, September 8, 2021 – AN ARTIST WHOSE MOODY IMAGES ARE FASCINATING

By admin

FROM THE ARCHIVES

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

462nd ISSUE

‘Louis Michel Eilshemius’

An eccentric loner paints New York

at dusk and in moonlight

from Ephemeral New York

Born to a wealthy family in New Jersey in 1864, he was educated in Europe and then Cornell University. After persuading his father to let him enroll in the Art Students League and pursue painting, he returned to live at his family’s Manhattan brownstone at 118 East 57th Street.

His early work earned notoriety and was selected for exhibition at the National Academy of Design in the 1880s.

“Eilshemius’s early artistic style was rooted in lessons he gleaned from his studies abroad, specifically the landscape aesthetics of the Barbizon School and French impressionism,” states the National Gallery of Art.

“New York Rooftops,” undated

In the 1890s and 1900s he traveled the world, published books of poetry and a novel, and continued to paint. But what one critic called his “outsized” ego led Eilshemius, by all accounts a loner and eccentric, to reject the contemporary art scene.

“By 1911, disconcerted by the lack of attention his paintings attracted, he had renounced his formal training and transitioned to an entirely self-conscious and seemingly self-taught style.”

That self-taught style was dreamy, romantic, and visionary. Influenced by reclusive 19th century painter Albert Pinkham Ryder, it was described as having a “sinister magic.”

Autumn Evening, Park Avenue,” 1915
“The paintings of this time became increasingly less conventional and punctuated by an element of fantasy, depicting voluptuous nudes and moonlit landscapes,” states the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. “With whimsical flourish, Eilshemius also painted sinuous frames onto these pictures, thereby adding both dimensionality and flatness to his lyrical and romantic scenes.”

Though he isn’t known as a New York City streetscapes painter, Eilshemius seems to have occasionally painted the city around him—creating muted, mystical scenes of Gotham’s shabbier neighborhoods in twilight and moonlight.

As Eilshamius turned away from the art world, he became more of an oddball, a “bearded, querulous, erratic man whose gaunt figure was a stock one in the galleries that never hung his work,” according to his obituary in the New York Times.

East Side New York,” undated

Now he was living in the dusty family brownstone with just his brother, Henry. When he wasn’t haranguing gallery owners to buy his work, he was handing out pamphlets touting himself as an artistic genius, or writing thousands of letters to city newspapers. (The Sun printed some of them under amusing headlines, states his obituary.)

As the 20th century went on, however, Eilshemius was rediscovered by the art world. In the 1920s and 1930s he had numerous exhibits, and his talent was recognized by the critics of the era.

“At this time, his success both confounded and fueled his perceived peculiarities and erratic behavior and, injured in an automobile accident in 1932, Eilshemius became increasingly reclusive,” according to the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

“New York Street at Dusk,” undated
When Henry died in 1940, Eilshemius was left ailing and impoverished in the family’s “gloomy, gaslit” brownstone. In 1941 he came down with pneumonia, but he protested going to the hospital, so doctors put him in Bellevue’s psych ward.

He died in December of that year, in debt but with the recognition he always wanted.

“A feisty rebel and a tireless iconoclast, he never painted to satisfy the fashions of his day, but only to please his own strange and sometimes nightmarish vision,” wrote David L. Shirey in the New York Times in 1978, in a piece on an exhibit of Eilshemius’ work. “It was a vision characterized by extraordinary personal insight and imagination.”

Autumn light and solitude on Park Avenue
September 26, 2013
I’m not sure what part of Park Avenue painter Louis Michel Eilshemius depicts here. But I don’t think it matters.

He’s captured the orangey glow and foreboding solitude that can be seen and felt all over city streets at dusk in the fall.

WEDNESDAY PHOTOS OF THE DAY

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TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

THE GIRL PUZZLE
UNDER CONSTRUCTION AT LIGHTHOUSE PARK.

https://www.prometheusart.com/the-girl-puzzle-honoring-nellie-bly-nyc.html

ALEXIS VILLAFANE, ARLENE BESSENOFF, GLORIA HERMAN & LAURA HUSSEY  GOT IT!!!

FROM GUY LUDWIG:

The Queensboro Corporation has a special footnote in the world of broadcasting. In 1922, Queenboro paid for the very first “commercial” in radio history. This was a fifteen minute talk about the advantages – and, of course, the healthful joys – living “in the country” might bring. Queensboro was not permitted to say they were in the real estate business, nor that they had homes to sell or rent. Rather the copy spoke of tranquil gardens, healthful leisure and the kind of life-quality possible only outside of “cramped” Manhattan. The radio station, New York’s WEAF, later became WNBC and is now WFAN. In 1922, it was owned by A T & T and eventually became part of the first radio network in America, operated by the National Broadcasting Company. Many other commercials followed – as we all know – but for several years, the odd – and very strict – policy of never mentioning one’s product directly was adhered to by WEAF. It was “non-commercial” in a manner not unlike PBS thirty years ago – no direct selling. That said, dozens of “sponsors” lined up immediately after Queensboro’s debut – including Eveready Batteries (“A flashlight is essential in every home”), Atwater-Kent Radios (“Never before could one hear Opera at the turn of a dial”) and Delco Sparkplugs (“A well-tuned automobile is a SAFER

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island
Historical Society unless otherwise indicated

EPHEMERAL NEW YORK

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