A closer look at the art of Hisako Hibi and Matsusaburo Hibi
Hisako Hibi, Floating Clouds, 1944, oil on canvas, 19 1/16 × 23 × 1 1/2 in. (48.4 × 58.4 × 3.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the American Women’s History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, 2023.6.1
In 2023, SAAM acquired exemplary paintings by two groundbreaking figures of American art: Hisako Hibi and Matsusaburo Hibi.
Both were part of the vibrant and diverse art scene that thrived in San Francisco between the World Wars. Immigrants from Japan, they met in San Francisco in the late 1920s, when Hisako (née Shimizu) was studying oil painting at the California School of Fine Arts. Matsusaburo was already an established figure, having played a central role in organizing the East West Art Society, an association that brought together artists and art traditions from Europe and Asia. The couple married in 1930 and later moved to Hayward, California, where Matsusaburo opened a school for Japanese language and art. Even as they had two children, both continued to exhibit regularly, Hisako becoming one of only three Japanese American women to have work included in the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40.
However, little of the art Hisako and Matsusaburo Hibi created before World War II survives today. As with scores of other Japanese Americans, the events of the war sharply impacted the Hibis’ lives. In one of the worst civil rights violations in the history of the United States, the issuing of Executive Order 9066 in 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, mandated the mass removal and incarceration of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast. Given about a week to prepare and told to bring only what they could carry, the Hibis had no choice but to leave their paintings behind. The Hibi family would spend more than three years in government detention, mostly at the Topaz Relocation Camp in the high desert of Utah. When the war ended, they moved to New York City. Matsusaburo died of cancer less than two years later, in 1947. By the time Hisako returned to California in 1954, their earlier artwork could not be found.
The Hibis’ story underscores the vulnerability of historic Asian American art. Although the Japanese were the first group of Asian immigrants to significantly participate in American modernism, their contributions have been largely invisible in scholarly and public conceptions of U.S. art and culture. Family members, a few committed collectors and art historians, and institutions dedicated to preserving Japanese American history and culture have been most responsible for protecting their work and bringing it to public attention. It remains now for large art museums such as SAAM to contribute to the recuperation and reintroduction of artists like Hisako and Matsusaburo Hibi to the history of American art—through acquisitions, exhibitions, and new scholarship.
Thanks to a crucial introduction provided by the scholar ShiPu Wang, I had the opportunity to meet Ibuki Hibi Lee, the daughter of Hisako and Matsusaburo Hibi, in 2022. In an apartment in San Francisco, I was astonished to see the number and variety of artworks cared for by Ibuki and her family members for decades. Four paintings, now in SAAM’s collection, stood out immediately, two of which were created while the Hibis were incarcerated at Topaz.
Matsusaburo George Hibi, Coyotes Came Out of the Desert, 1945, oil on canvas, 26 15/16 × 23 × 1 1/2 in. (68.4 × 58.4 × 3.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Catherine Walden Myer Fund, 2023.5
Matsusaburo’s Coyotes Came Out of the Desert (1945) depicts a group of animals roaming the camp barracks, seemingly in search of prey. The painting may relate to an actual event—the artist inscribed on its back: “It was a hard winter in Topaz the snow [lay] deep. Big [coyotes] came out of the desert right up to the camps and no one dared to go out of the doors.” But the work also masterfully conveys an atmosphere of dread and unease, emotions surely felt by the inmates as they lived under surveillance and grappled with the loss of their freedoms.
Hisako’s Floating Clouds(1944) is similarly both specific and universalized, grounded in observed reality yet transcendent in theme. While many of her camp paintings feature small figures in the landscape, here she omits the ground entirely, directing our gaze past the geometric rooftops of the barracks to the luminous clouds above. Hisako later inscribed on the back of the canvas: “‘Free, free’….I want to be free/ Free as that cloud I see up above Topaz.” Trapped in an oppressive environment and surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, it is no wonder she turned to the sky for solace and mental escape. In its boundlessness, the sky suggests freedom as well as connection—it is shared by everyone on earth. The sky Hisako gazed at from Topaz was the same sky all Americans looked up to from across the vast United States.
Hisako Hibi, Peace, 1948, oil on canvas, 26 1/2 × 22 5/8 × 1 1/8 in. (67.3 × 57.5 × 2.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the American Women’s History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, 2023.6.2
After the death of her husband, Hisako supported her family working as a seamstress in a garment factory. Despite financial hardship, she continued to paint and grow as an artist, her work becoming more colorful and driven by her imagination. Some of her New York paintings reflect the artist’s anxiety and isolation at the time, depicting the city as a frightening, nightmarish landscape. Others, such as Peace (1948) are more hopeful statements. The painting shows a beatific angel facing down weapons of war, subject matter that reflects Hibi’s deeply held pacificism and ongoing engagement with art as a means of personal and spiritual consolation.
In 1953, after more than 30 years in the United States, Hisako Hibi finally gained American citizenship, thanks to the passing of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which made naturalized citizenship available to immigrants born in Asia. The following year, she returned to San Francisco, where she remained until her death in 1991. During the 1960s, her paintings became, in her words, “brighter and much freer” in expression. She experimented with materials and techniques, painting at times with twigs, pebbles and driftwood rather than using a brush. She also looked beyond European painting traditions, for the first time explicitly drawing on Asian aesthetics in her brushwork and compositions. Autumn (1970) is a stunning late work, an almost purely abstract composition whose magnetism hinges on Hibi’s delicate, gestural brushwork and canny activation of empty space. She renders the glory of fall foliage with intense color and touches of the brush that echo Asian calligraphy. Hibi exhibited actively during this period of her life, becoming an esteemed figure in Bay Area art communities. In 1985, the San Francisco Arts Commission granted Hibi an Award of Honor for her achievements.
Hisako Hibi, Autumn, 1970, oil on canvas, 39 1/8 × 32 1/4 × 1 1/2 in. (99.4 × 81.9 × 3.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the American Women’s History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, 2023.6.3
SAAM is grateful to acquire these rare works from the Hibi family. By entering the museum’s collection, Hisako and Matsusaburo Hibi’s paintings will be discovered by new generations of admirers—whether on display in SAAM’s galleries, on the museum’s website and social media, in open storage, or on loan to other institutions. The impact of such encounters is intangible yet significant. A work of art previously unknown to the general public holds the potential of a revelatory perspective. It offers a window into another human being’s experience and vision and does so across expanses of geography and time. Despite the racial injustice and personal loss they confronted during their lives, the Hibis created lasting works of art in which beauty mingles poignantly with pain, resilience and hope.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
My morning view on a clear cold day about 7 a.m., 30 minutes before the sun rises.
CREDITS
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Fashion icon Ralph Lauren, who transformed a small necktie business into an international brand, joined elite company recently when he accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden.
Lauren, known for his “preppy threads,” but whose fashion empire extends to fragrance and furniture and beyond, said in a statement that it was an “honor of a lifetime.”
In bestowing the award, the White House cited Lauren’s philanthropy, “including fighting to end cancer as we know it,” and noted that “Ralph Lauren reminds us of our distinct style as a nation of dreamers and doers.”
And those who know their Sullivan County, New York, history know that in the case of Ralph Lauren, his own dreams started right there. That’s right, Ralph Lauren once lived and worked in Monticello.
Ralph Lifshitz, was born to Frank and Frieda Cutler Lifshitz on October 14, 1939, and grew up in the same Jewish neighborhood in The Bronx that produced Robert Klein, Penny and Garry Marshall, and rival designer Calvin Klein. His father made a living painting houses, and also dabbled in art, as well.
“The Lifshitz family had spent summers there for years,” Gross writes. “In the 1930s, Ralph’s uncle, Izzy Lifshitz, opened a produce store in Monticello and soon became a wholesaler, supplying fruits and vegetables to the many local summer camps and hotels. Eastern European immigrants had vacationed in the mountains since the turn of the century, converting farmhouses into boardinghouses, boardinghouses into hotels, and hotels into grand resorts like Grossinger’s, Kutsher’s, and the Concord.”
Several members of the Cutler family owned property there, too. One of Frieda’s brothers had a bungalow colony. Frank and Frieda had a kochalyn– a rooming house with a communal kitchen. Frank bought the Green Mountain House (aka Lifshitz Bungalows) but hated it because he had to commute every weekend while Frieda and the kids got to stay all summer.
“When he got there on Fridays, he’d be overwhelmed with repair and painting chores,” according to Gross. “The big white house atop a wooded rise had two bedrooms on its ground floor, three more upstairs, and two separate bungalows with five more bedrooms – every one with its own sink.
“Next door was the Hilltop Bungalow Colony, owned by the Pincus and Cohen families. All alone together on their hilltop, the two compounds were a world apart in the 1940s. ‘We were kept secluded and out of the mainstream,’ says a Cohen cousin, Barbara Levy. ‘We knew there was a war, but nobody talked about it.’
“They would all swim in the Hilltop’s unfiltered concrete pool, climb the apple trees, go berry picking, play punchball, sneak into the local hotels, and walk to the movies at the Rialto and Broadway in town.”
Frank Lifshitz used to frequent Gusar’s Pharmacy on Broadway in the village. He used to paint pictures and sell them outside, usually allowing drug store owner George Gusar to see them first.
One day during the summer of 1955, he asked Gusar if he might know where the two Lifshitz boys might find summer employment. Gusar hired them both.
“I don’t remember much about them,” he once related to a newspaper reporter. “They didn’t really stand out, but you have to realize, I’ve had a lot of people work for me over the years who went on to become famous, like George Cooke and Eddie Cooke.”
The boys – Ralph and his older brother Jerry – left the drugstore after a short time for jobs as waiters at Camp Roosevelt on Sackett Lake, where they worked for a number of summers thereafter. Their tenure there proved life changing.
“Camp Roosevelt opened up new possibilities for Ralph,” Gross writes. “It was his first real exposure to a world beyond the insular immigrant community his parents inhabited. Though most of the campers were middle class, some were rich – the children of hotel owners, real estate moguls, and newspaper distributors – and they were real preppies, not just dress-up wannabes.
“Their world, until then alien, suddenly seemed within his reach. ‘Even then,’ says one of Jerry’s campers, ‘Ralph knew where to mingle.’”
The Camp Roosevelt experience made a lasting impression on Ralph Lifshitz, and was largely responsible for instilling in him his renowned drive and insatiable ambition. As Gross points out, he became a sort of real life Jay Gatsby, “who sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.”
In keeping with this new image, he and his siblings legally changed their name to Lauren in the late 1950s, and the rest, as they say, is history, culminating in the nation’s highest civilian honor, whose previous winners include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Ronald Reagan, Maya Angelou, and Mother Teresa.
Obviously, Ralph still “knows where to mingle.”
I wrote a few months ago about my relatives that were the owners of the Luzon Lodge, far from the later Catskill experience.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
No, it is not Sportspark! This is the greatest feature on the MSC MIraviglia, the cruise ship I sailed on last week. A great way to have basketball, soccer, tennis, pickleball while at sea. Keeping teens active this is the best attraction on board after unlimited food at the buffet. (During really rough seas, the gym is closed for safety).
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul said she wants to spend $400 million to revitalize Albany, including committing $150 million to the State Museum and $35 million to move soon to be announced proposals to re-imagine some of Albany’s Hudson River waterfront into the design phase.
Hochul teased the history-related proposals in her State of the State address and in press materials on Tuesday. Plans for how that money would be spent will come when the Governor’s budget proposal is released later this month.
“If it all comes true, it will be the biggest damn Christmas present to Albany in decades,” State Senator Pat Fahy told the Albany Times Union. “It’s extraordinary.”
The $150 million the New York State Museum would receive comes years after unfulfilled promises of a $14 million Museum renovation, which was supposed to include new exhibits, a wall system for the exhibition space that would make it more versatile, and interactive technology and media displays.
This new investment will be used “to renovate the New York State Museum and upgrade the exhibits to be more inviting to visitors, including families,” according to the Governor’s office.
Hochul told the Times Union that her office would convene a panel of education and tourism experts. The panel “will focus on how to best preserve the museum’s cultural and educational heritage while modernizing the space to be more appealing,” she said.
Details of the State Museum proposals provided to the Times Union did not mention the involvement of the state Education Department, which oversees the Office of Cultural Education’s State Museum, Library and Archives.
“Instead, it suggests that the state ‘identify a new operating model for the museum, returning this world-class collection to its rightful place as a point of pride for all New Yorkers.’, the Times Union reported.
Education Department spokesperson JP O’Hare told the paper: “We look forward to reviewing the governor’s proposal and will provide our feedback once we have had the opportunity to assess the details thoroughly.”
Management has been at issue at the State Museum for at least a decade, and has recently gained support for structural change the Times Union reported.
“Last summer, past and current museum employees expressed frustration about what they saw as a lack of oversight from the education department, which they said contributed to stagnation and management problems at the museum,” according to the paper.
“At the time, Fahy discussed her 2023 proposal to create an advisory body — including those from the private sector — to oversee the museum as well as the other two entities under the Office of Cultural Education: the state archives and library.”
The Governor also supported plans to include Harriet Tubman as one of New York’s representatives in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall; more funding for community centers and playgrounds statewide; and more.
COMMENT
I have visited the Albany Cultural Education Building many times while in Albany.
The building contains the NYS Archives, where RIOC historic records were relocated a few years ago since RIOC was unable to safely preserve them.
The State Library has been used many times for historic research and is located in the building. These two institutions are a great resource for historians and everyone.
The problem is the NYS Museum, an enormous space on three floors of the structure. The exhibits are out of date, rarely changed, and the animals in the dusty dioramas are on death row. There are some areas, such as the 9/11 WTC exhibit, that are so realistic you can smell the smoke that still lingers in the vehicles exhibited. In general, the museum is sad and hopefully will finally be a shining exhibit of State history and not a dusty relic of the 1960s Rockefeller development of the Capitol.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Members of the Coler Auxiliary gathered together to celebrate 2024 and plan for 2025 projects to improve residents’ lives on Wednesday. from left to right: Jacqueline Kwedy, Theresa Chamberlain, Judith Berdy, Marie Marie, Glorias Swaby, Mary Coleman, Emilia Ciobanu, Emmanuella Chevalier. (not shown: Moriko Betz, Khady Sene, Alida Torres, Darlene Torres)
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
I am back from vacation and the new Lenovo is making life a breeze. I can tell you the tale of the week on the high seas later. Did not miss your weather, but mine was never above 75 degrees.
John La Farge: Eclectic Art Circles in London & Manhattan
During the late nineteenth century articles that focused on artist’s dwelling and studio as a demonstration of his or her creative personality became fashionable reading.
Between March and April 1884, six installments were published simultaneously in London and New York City of “Artists at Home,” a serial publication of twenty-five photogravures (a high quality print process) by Joseph Parkin Mayall with biographical sketches by the art critic and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Frederic George Stephens (1827-1907).
The London home of Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) in Holland Park with its Arab Hall or Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Italianate villa in St John’s Wood were presented in great detail and glowing terms. These grandiose mansions created enormous curiosity, both in Britain and America.
Victorians in Togas
Introduced by the great German art critic Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) in 1763, the term “eclectic” was most clearly defined a decade later by Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses (1774), describing the ancient heritage as a “magazine of common property, always open to the public, whence every man has a right to take what materials he pleases.”
Dutch painter Lawrence (Lourens) Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) was born on January 8, 1836, in Dronrijp, Friesland. Trained at the Antwerp Academy of Art, he was an Orientalist with a preference for Merovingian and Egyptian subjects.
When on honeymoon in the Campania region, he visited Pompeii to witness the first excavations of the site. Inspired by the spectacle, he embarked on depicting scenes from Greek and Roman Antiquity. A prolific artist, he came to be known as the painter of “Victorians in togas.”
In 1864 he secured a commission for twenty-four pictures from Belgian-born dealer and publisher Ernest Gambart (1814-1902) who at the time dominated London’s art market; in 1869 he received a contract for another forty-eight paintings. These works were exhibited at the prestigious French Gallery, Pall Mall. Successful sales linked the painter closer to Britain.
In December 1869, some nine months after the death of his first wife, Lawrence met Laura Epps. Half his age, she made him decide to settle in London with his two young daughters. Having married in July 1871, the couple made Townsend House on Titchfield Terrace near Regent’s Park their home.
Lawrence re-designed the property to resemble a Roman villa, but in the early hours of October 10, 1874, an accident happened. The barge Tilbury was towed westwards along Regent’s Park Canal.
Laden with sugar, nuts, barrels of petroleum and five tons of gunpowder, the canal boat caught fire as it went under Macclesfield Bridge, causing an explosion that killed all on board. The blast seriously damaged Townsend House.
In Alma-Tadema’s elaborate reconstruction of the property each room was given a distinct theme. Downstairs there were a Gothic library, a Japanese studio (for Laura), and a Spanish boudoir. The upstairs parlors were laid out in Moorish and Byzantine styles. Lawrence’s studio was given a Pompeian look.
As soon as the restoration work was finished, the artist went out in search of a new project to mark his position as the arbiter of Victorian taste. He found a villa at 44 Grove End Road in St John’s Wood, once owned by Jacques-Joseph (James) Tissot, a prominent French painter who had returned to Paris in December 1882.
When the family settled there in November 1886, the grand mansion of sixty-six rooms had been modeled in Italianate style. The entrance to the hall was laid with Persian tiles and named the Hall of Panels as it consisted of an “unending” series (some fifty in total) of vertical paintings against the white walls produced by friends and visitors to the house.
One room was filled with treasures from China and Japan. Another chamber had leather-covered walls with cabinets and brasses of Dutch workmanship.
Central to the structure was a balcony overlooking a marble basin with fountain. Alma-Tadema himself occupied a three-story studio with walls of grey-green marble and capped with a semi-circular dome covered in aluminum. One of its stained glass windows was designed by a painter and muralist from New York City.
Gilded Age Architect
Having studied art history in Rome, Vermont-born Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) decided on a career in architecture instead. He trained in Geneva, before being admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the very first American architect to enter this prestigious institution. His schooling was thoroughly French.
Back in the United States by 1856, he opened a practice in New York becoming the city’s most prominent architect. He has been labeled the builder who “gilded the Gilded Age.”
Hunt shaped New York’s built environment with his designs for the Metropolitan Museum, the Roosevelt Building, the vanguard Stuyvesant apartment block, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, and numerous grand mansions (including Vanderbilt’s estate on Fifth Avenue), although few of his buildings still stand.
His grand structures were based on French neo-classical and Renaissance models. Almost single-handedly, he replaced the dominant English High Victorian public building of the 1860s/70s with his interpretation of French classicism.
His first eye-catching project was the Tenth Street Studio Building. Completed in January 1858, the structure at 51 West 10th Street was New York City’s earliest multiple-artist studio. Boasting twenty-five studios, its central atrium was a shared area that featured a glass ceiling and gas lighting for daylong illumination.
Hunt himself rented space in the building where he founded the first American architectural school in 1858.
An early tenant in the building was William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) who first occupied a small apartment and then took over the gallery originally intended as exhibition space.
To American critics, eclecticism served as a defining characteristic of the artist’s work to indicate his exploration of multiple genres, his stylistic borrowings from Old Masters, and his passion for exotic objects of various historical periods. Chase encouraged his students to adopt a similar approach by instructing them: “Take the best from everything.”
Marquand Mansion
In 1884 Hunt built the Marquand residence at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue & 68th Street. Banker Henry Gurdon Marquand (1819-1902) had made his fortune in financing railroads. Having developed a passion for art, he acquired paintings by Anthony van Dyck, an array of Roman bronzes, and a rich collection of Chinese porcelains.
One of the co-founders of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marquand acted as its second President and donated many works of art to the institution.
The Marquand mansion was designed to call up memories of a French “château” (castle). The outside looked palatial, but ample attention was given to the building’s interior. Rooms were arranged in a rectangular plan around a central hall from where a double staircase gave access to the tiered galleries above.
Each section was decorated in a different historical style. A Pompeian salon, Moorish library, Japanese drawing room and Spanish refectory were designed to house Marquand’s eclectic collection of art works.
Alma-Tadema’s presence here was almost inevitable. In 1882, Marquand had commissioned a painting from him intended to depict Plato teaching philosophy to a group of followers. After various re-workings of the painting, the artist eventually completed “A Reading from Homer” in 1885.
He would also be involved in the decoration of the estate. His skill as an interior designer was internationally known. Marquand was aware of his talent when he commissioned the artist to design the mansion’s music room.
The Greek-style suite of furniture was planned by Alma-Tadema himself (at the staggering cost of £25,000) and compromised a music cabinet, several settees, chairs, occasional tables and stools.
All items were executed in London’s West End by Messrs Johnstone, Norman & Co. of 67 New Bond Street under the supervision of Norfolk-born William Christmas Codman (1839-1921, who, from 1891 onward, would act as chief silver designer for Gorham Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode Island).
Alma-Tadema commissioned Frederic Leighton to create a triptych ceiling painting that featured allegorical figures representing music, dance and poetry. Central to the room was a grand pianoforte, the workings of which had been supplied by Steinway & Sons (now known as the “Alma-Tadema Steinway”).
Edward Poynter, another artist who sought inspiration in classical antiquity, was requested to paint the piano’s fallboard. Its interior lid was fitted with parchment sheets to be signed by its performers (names included Walter Damrosch, Arthur Sullivan, William Gilbert and others).
Backwards & Forwards
John La Farge (1835-1910) was the eldest child in a family of urbane Catholic French immigrants who had settled in New York City. His father, a successful lawyer, was a refugee from the ill-fated expedition by Napoleon Bonaparte to regain control of Saint-Domingue on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
Born in 1835, John was brought up with close attention to French culture and educated at Mount Saint Mary’s College, Maryland. He then studied law in New York, without ever abandoning his interest in art.
In 1856 he left for Europe. In Paris he briefly worked at Thomas Couture’s studio and visited museums in northern Europe to copy the Old Masters. When news broke of his father’s illness, he returned to New York City.
On his way back he stopped by in Manchester to see an exhibition that included paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites from which he drew inspiration.
After briefly taking up his studies again, the death of his father left him financially independent. Free from having to pursue a legal career, he dedicated his life to painting and rented a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building (which he would maintain for the rest of his career).
After meeting Richard Morris Hunt, he traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, to study painting with the architect’s brother, William Morris Hunt.
Having married in 1860, his family life was centered in Rhode Island, but his outlook was that of a cultivated metropolitan artist. During the 1860s he was one of the first American artists to be influenced by Japanese color prints (he visited Japan in 1886 in the company of Henry Adams).
Having embarked on mural painting in the 1870s, he was commissioned by architect Henry Hobson Richardson to paint walls at Trinity Church, Copley Square, in Boston. The project (completed in 1876) established his name as a muralist.
During that same period he began experimenting with stained glass which, at the time, was a relatively new medium to the United States. In Britain, the Gothic Revival had elevated its creation to an art form.
The majority of stained glass used in America was imported and produced in a traditional manner. Having worked out a technique for the manufacture of opalescent glass, La Farge was granted a patent (no. 224,831) for a “Colored-Glass Window.”
Between 1886 and 1902 he created a series of glass stained windows based on the Japanese theme of “peonies in the wind.” One of those had been commissioned by Alma-Tadema for the decoration of his London studio. Another was acquired by Marquand and installed at his Newport (summer) residence.
It was a meaningful moment when, in October 1912, London auctioneers Hampton & Sons announced the sale of Alma-Tadema’s Grove End property and its contents. Jean Guiffrey, a former curator at the Louvre in Paris acting on behalf of the Boston Museum of Fine Art, acquired the glass stained painting for its return to the United States.
The complexity of La Farge’s workmanship was shown in a window commissioned in 1908 by Mrs George T. Bliss for her house at 9 East 68th Street, Manhattan. The work features a woman in classical garb drawing back a doorway curtain. Tiny pieces of glass were joined together to evoke folds in her gown; panels with garlands and Pompeian ornament frame the work.
This is the paradox: La Farge used ground-breaking techniques in order to create an image that represented the backward looking tradition associated with Alma-Tadema and members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
In the same year that John La Farge began work on the Bliss window, six automobiles representing America, France, Germany and Italy set off from Times Square on a 169-day ordeal competing in a New York City to Paris Race. The contest was won by the American team driving “The Flyer,” a car built in Buffalo, NY, by the E. R. Thomas Motor Company.(You can read more about the race here).
Whilst contemporary artists retreated into the past by seeking inspiration in late medieval or early Renaissance culture, technology’s exponential growth moved ahead and increased the pace of life. Art had to be dragged into the modern world.
While others were shopping for “diamonds & jewels” I was at this wonderful Ardastra sanctuary in Nassau. I was thrilled to meet Rosie’s relative living in the warm Bahamian sunshine.
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: W. P. Frith’s “A Private View at the Royal Academy,” 1883; Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s “A Reading from Homer,” 1885 (Philadelphia Museum of Art); Henry Gurdon Marquand’s mansion at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 68th Street, built in 1884, demolished ca. 1912; The Alma-Tadema Steinway, 1887 (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts); John La Farge’s “Peonies Blown in the Wind,” 1886 (Museum of Fine Art, Boston); and John La Farge, Window from the Bliss house at 68th Street, 1908/9. (The Met, New York City).
JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
We will be off line for two reasons the next two weeks:
Our computer is aging out after 5 years and just getting too difficult to use. The new Lenovo is out of the box and will be ready to use very soon. Time for another trip sailing for a week. See you later this month.
For most of the 20th century, the City of New York ran the largest municipal broadcast organization in the United States, consisting of WNYC-FM, AM and TV. During this time, WNYC brought the diverse lives and cultures of the city into the homes of its residents through original entertainment, journalism and educational programming.
Since the separation of WNYC from the City in 1996, the New York City Municipal Archives has been caring for the thousands of films and video tapes from WNYC-TV, and thousands of radio recordings in partnership with the WNYC Foundation’s Archives. Some digitized items added to the online gallery show deep appreciation for the life and work of music legend Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington.
Duke Ellington Day was proclaimed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on April 29th, 2009, which would have been the jazz legend’s 110th birthday.
Ellington is famous for adding his piano to brass orchestral jazz with songs such as “It Don’t Mean a Thing (if it Ain’t Got that Swing),” and was house band leader of the influential and infamous prohibition era Harlem venue the Cotton Club.
The City of New York has honored the composer several times for his work and 2009 was not the first Duke Ellington Day. In 1965, Duke Ellington was presented with the Bronze Medal by Acting Mayor Paul Screvane, and Mayor John V. Lindsay also proclaimed Duke Ellington Day on September 15th, 1969, in honor of his contributions to American culture. WNYC Radio and TV covered the two events.
Long before the awards and honors, Ellington arrived in New York in 1923, leaving his successful career in his hometown of Washington, D.C. for opportunity in the vibrant art scene of Harlem.
That Manhattan neighborhood was in the middle of a cultural awakening now described as the Harlem Renaissance, when many enduring works by African American artists were created.
Aside from Ellington, other musical giants like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong wrote and performed in clubs across Harlem. Writers like Arthur Schomburg and Langston Hughes penned famous works such as ‘The Weary Blues’ in 1926 and visual artists Richmond Barthé and Meta Vaux Warwick Fuller portrayed the beauty of black physicality.
Duke Ellington had gained recognition as a member in other bands already, but his career really took off once he became the band leader at the Cotton Club.
Although the venue was highly popular among its exclusively wealthy and white clientele, the real surge in popularity came when CBS began broadcasting the performances across the country, making Duke Ellington the first nationally-broadcast African American band leader. This popularity quickly led to short films with RKO Pictures and recording deals with major record labels.
Ellington and his band left the Cotton Club in 1931 and found great success in composing and recording original music, as well as touring internationally despite the onset of the Great Depression.
Some of his most enduring work, like “Caravan” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing” were composed and performed for the first time during this period. Ellington also began to win major awards for his work when he scored a film titled Symphony in Black (1935), featuring Billie Holiday’s first screen appearance, which won the Academy Award for Best Musical Short Piece that year.
Ellington’s popularity waned during the 1940s, only to resurge in the 1950s and ‘60s after his headline-grabbing appearance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. The resulting vinyl record of the performance has become the best-selling album of Ellington’s entire career. Soon he and his orchestra were in high demand to play at festivals across the country.
Ellington spent the later years of his career split between expanding his discography and receiving awards and accolades for his decades of musical innovation.
In addition to honors from the City of New York, Duke Ellington also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame and won 12 Grammy’s as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Although the original Cotton Club no longer exists, the indelible mark that Duke Ellington left on the City and its culture is evident not just in the awards he was given, but the material now preserved and publicly available.
A version of this essay by Chris Nicols was first published on the New York City Municipal Archives Blog. The Municipal Archives preserves and makes available New York City government’s historical records. Records include office documents, manuscripts, still and moving images, vital records, maps, blueprints, and sound recordings. Learn more about historical records the Municipal Archives at their website.
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