Tuesday, May 7, 2024 – FORGOTTEN ART REDISCOVERED
TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2024
ISSUE # 1230
The forgotten painter
who captured the
contrasting landscapes
of 1930 New York City
Ephemeral New York
By the Depression year of 1930, New York City was increasingly becoming a city of highs and lows.
[“Sixth Avenue and Ziegfeld Theater”]
The highs were evident in Gotham’s skyline. Elegant residential towers lined the borders of Central Park and the city’s posher avenues. The Chrysler Building rose above 42nd Street, and the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center soon followed at different ends of Midtown.
At odds with these gleaming towers were the lows—the many low-rise blocks across Manhattan. Spread out between their new high-rise neighbors and congregated in poorer, more densely packed areas were tenement buildings, factories, and warehouses, some crumbling with age.
[“The Cavalry, Central Park”]
Someone who appears to have noticed this stark contrast in the cityscape was Médard Verburgh. A Belgian painter of sensitive, colorful portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, Verburgh’s work was to be exhibited at the prestigious Newhouse Galleries on East 57th Street in January 1930.
Though Verburgh seems to be an artist forgotten by the contemporary world, he had a presence in the first half of the 20th century. A critic writing in the New York Times described the Newhouse Galleries exhibit as one that “should not be missed by anyone interested in Belgian art—or, for that matter, in art more catholically considered.”
Verburgh, 44 years old at the time, presumably came to the city for the exhibit. He also apparently felt inspired enough by the physical landscape to paint it.
[“On the Rooftops of New York”]
Each of the four works in this post date to 1930, and all capture the city’s contrasts in vibrant colors and rough brushstrokes. The top image, “Sixth Avenue and Ziegfeld Theater,” juxtaposes office towers and smaller commercial and residential holdouts on a busy traffic artery of the then-modern city.
The Ziegfeld Theater, opened in 1929 at the corner of 54th Street, would be the whitish building on the left—though it doesn’t resemble the actual Ziegfeld Theater that occupied this site until it was demolished in 1966.
The second painting, “The Calvary, Central Park,” showcases the enormous apartment towers and office buildings of Central Park South looking like a fortification around the expansive pasture of the park and the equestrians riding inside it.
[“Le Metro Aerien”]
“On the Rooftops of New York,” the third painting, features tenement roof dwellers dancing and making music, a black cat curled up in the corner bearing witness to the sounds and steps. It’s an intimate and personal scene with the impersonal, impenetrable skyline in the background.
The final painting has a French title, “Le Metro Aerien”—or The Aerial Metro in English. Here Verburgh gives us the thickest brushstrokes with images of a brick-red warehouse or factory and an elevated train circling in front of it, and sketches of skyscrapers in the rear.
Exactly what neighborhood the painting is set in isn’t clear, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Verburgh presents another contrast of the old and new New York City—the energy and might of the old in comparison to the fortresslike facelessness of the 1930 skyscraper metropolis
16 Responses to “The forgotten painter who captured the contrasting landscapes of 1930 New York City”
Scott Says:
April 29, 2024 at 9:18 am | Reply
amazing works!
Faefly Says:
April 29, 2024 at 12:21 pm | Reply
velovixen Says:
April 29, 2024 at 1:48 pm | Reply
- It’s a shame that Verburgh has been forgotten. One reason, however unjust, is that he wasn’t “social realist” enough for the 1930s and its WPA posters and too concretely expressionistic for the abstract painters (and the critics who championed them) after World War II. Even the most drab of Verburgh’s colors express the life and energy I believe he was trying to convey. You are so right about the “highs and lows.” It’s sadly ironic that the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings were completed just as the country (and world) plunged into the Great Depression. In “My Lost City,” F.Scott Fitzgerald observed, “From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building.”
ephemeralnewyork Says:
April 30, 2024 at 12:33 am | ReplyI love that Fitzgerald quote; it’s similar to me to his observation in the Great Gatsby about the Corona Ash Dump (transformed later into Flushing Meadows Park):“This is the valley of ashes, a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.”
Bob Says:
April 29, 2024 at 5:10 pm | ReplyI suspect the elevated railroad shown is the Coenties Slip curve. https://www.art.com/products/p60406165013-sa-i12882153/charles-phelps-cushing-1930s-downtown-financial-district-curve-of-third-avenue-elevated-train-at-coenties-slip-new-york.htm
April 30, 2024 at 12:34 am | ReplyIt looks like it for sure, thanks Bob. I wish the red warehouse-type building was in the photo as well, but I suspect Verburgh may have added that or embellished an existing building, as is his prerogative as an artist.robertl2 Says:
April 30, 2024 at 1:42 pmDefinitely agree with Bob re the Coentes Slip location, based on Verburgh’s placement of the Singer Tower and the spires of Trinity Church, both on Broadway three blocks away from each other, a few blocks to the northwest — erasing, apparently by way of additional artistic liberty, the wall of buildings that would have blocked line of sight from Water Street, even in his day.
Frank dky Says:
April 30, 2024 at 8:51 am | ReplyHe certainly did capture the essence of New York, especially in that time frame. I particularly like the highs and lows and the contrast of the avenue,although of course today New York is in danger of being all highs and no lows as more and more of that 19th century material disappears. But then as now, this is where the real life of the neighborhood was and somewhat still is before it completely vanishes. The mom and pop stores, the small ethnic restaurants, the tons of apartments and rooms that housed different immigrants that built different neighborhoods. It was the grit but the real backbone of the neighborhood and the flavor. His paintings capture this atmosphere well..All of this in Manhattan is just about vanished and lost today. Manhattan is marvelous as a skyline from the Queens hellsgate viaduct but less impressive on the street level today once you arrive in the city.. Beautiful sculpture from afar but much of it is a dismal arid landscape for pedestrians nowadaysconlogco Says:
April 30, 2024 at 11:29 am | ReplyI love the Rooftop Scene. Hophead, hip-hop 1930s jive. I’m thinking there was some Wacky Tabaccy burning in skinny little hand-rolled ciggys. Off scene!Ava Ciliberti Says:
April 30, 2024 at 2:27 pm | ReplySuch beautiful work and great restraint of color palette. I love seeing the old cars tooA.M. Kloezeman (Mlle) Says:
April 30, 2024 at 6:38 pm | Reply1930 !Flemish Mézard Verburgh.Never Heard About.Such a Good Impression.Powerful Reflection of A City.Booming and Bustling.New World Symphony Would Fit.Yvette Says:
April 30, 2024 at 8:57 pm | ReplyLovely works of art. I wonder if that’s the curve southbound before the Simpson station in the Bronx of the 2 & 5 line.Keelin Murphy Says:
May 2, 2024 at 7:19 am | Replylovely painter with pitch perfect balance between what make a picture of -precisely and how to get it down -loosely and honestly. Such a jazz riff!rogerdblack Says:
May 4, 2024 at 8:05 pm | ReplyThese are all great, but there is no Ziegfeld Theater in the painting by that name. The Ziegfeld was on the west side of 6th Avenue, between 54th and 55th. That painting only shows 56th St. on the left side. Was it cropped?
May 4, 2024 at 11:36 pm | ReplyInteresting; thanks for your comment. I thought the Ziegfeld was the white building on the far left, though it does not resemble the actual Ziegfeld Theater on Sixth Avenue at the time. I figured it was artistic license. I’m not aware of any cropping to the painting.
May 5, 2024 at 7:52 pm | ReplyIt’s pretty clearly a view of Sixth Avenue and 54th Street with the Ziegfeld Theater at lower left, on the northwest corner of the intersection. The two-tone building half a block up from the Ziegfeld is still there at the NW corner at 55th (or was, as of 2020). There’s a definite foreshortening of the distance between 55th and 59th Streets, but no artistic license taken with the Ziegfeld’s location.
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Tags: Medard Verburgh 1930 New York City, Medard Verburgh Belgian Painter, Medard Verburgh Central Park, Medard Verburgh Painter in New York City, Medard Verburgh Ziegfeld Theater, New York Paintings 1930, Rooftops Tenements NYC Paintings
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