Painter and illustrator. Hassam was a leading American Impressionist whose work was much influenced by Claude Monet. His landscapes, street scenes, and interior scenes were both popularly and officially recognized.
Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)
Frederick Childe Hassam, the scion of an old New England family (his surname is a corruption of Horsham), grew up in the upper-middle-class suburb of Dorchester, Massachusetts. His father, a Boston merchant and hardware store owner, collected Americana well before this hobby became a popular pastime. He passed this interest in history along to his son. It is telling that the future artist first dabbled with a brush while sitting in the old coach that carried the Marquis de Lafayette through New England on his triumphal tour in 1824 – 25! Hassam, like many of his fellow artists, traveled to Europe for instruction in the 1880s and eventually settled in New York. Exposed to the full measure of urban hustle and bustle, Hassam returned to the past as often as he could and during the last forty years of his life traveled from one historic summer resort to the next, painting picturesque villages and towns throughout New England. The past is therefore a living presence in Hassam’s art. While his village scenes may appear quaint, they are also active statements about the importance of traditional New England values and institutions in an era of great change.
William H. Truettner and Roger B. Stein, editors, with contributions by Dona Brown, Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Judith K. Maxwell, Stephen Nissenbaum, Bruce Robertson, Roger B. Stein, and William H. Truettner Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory (Washington, D.C.; New Haven, Conn; and London: National Museum of American Art with Yale University Press, 1999)
Childe Hassam learned the value of hard work after his father’s hardware store burned to the ground and Hassam left school to work as a wood engraver. He made illustrations for newspapers in his hometown of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and began painting scenes of urban life in the 1880s. Ambitious and determined, Hassam settled in New York with his wife, Maude, and set to work painting the booming city. In the summer months he traveled around New England and to Appledore Island off the coast of New Hampshire. A sociable and extroverted character, Hassam surrounded himself with friends who enjoyed lively dinner parties that lasted late into the evenings. (Broun, “Childe Hassam’s America,” American Art, Fall 1999)
Childe Hassam, New York Bouquet, 1917, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.231
Childe Hassam, Tanagra (The Builders, New York), 1918, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.63
In Tanagra (The Builders, New York), Childe Hassam painted an ambivalent image of modern life. At the turn of the twentieth century, the skyscraper symbolized all that was dynamic and powerful in America. Architects praised the new towers as symbols of mankind’s reach for the heavens. But as the United States grew in power and prestige, the workers who provided the nation’s muscle also seemed to threaten Hassam’s orderly and prosperous world. The artist had won fame and fortune picturing New York for the delight of its moneyed class; the art, music, and fine manners surrounding this “blond Aryan girl” provided a buffer against the unruliness of America’s immigrant society. If the skyscraper represents worldly ambition, the other vertical elements in the painting—the lilies, the Hellenistic figurine, the panels of a beautiful oriental screen—suggest a different kind of aspiration. But in 1918, the refined life this woman pursued in her elegant environment was already under attack by the reality of war and the clamor of a new century.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
Childe Hassam, The Billboards, New York, 1916, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.222
Childe Hassam, The Village Elms, Easthampton, 1923, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.221
This series continues tomorrow
Weekend Photo of the Day
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
Sources
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Painter and illustrator. Hassam was a leading American Impressionist whose work was much influenced by Claude Monet. His landscapes, street scenes, and interior scenes were both popularly and officially recognized.
Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)
Frederick Childe Hassam, the scion of an old New England family (his surname is a corruption of Horsham), grew up in the upper-middle-class suburb of Dorchester, Massachusetts. His father, a Boston merchant and hardware store owner, collected Americana well before this hobby became a popular pastime. He passed this interest in history along to his son. It is telling that the future artist first dabbled with a brush while sitting in the old coach that carried the Marquis de Lafayette through New England on his triumphal tour in 1824 – 25! Hassam, like many of his fellow artists, traveled to Europe for instruction in the 1880s and eventually settled in New York. Exposed to the full measure of urban hustle and bustle, Hassam returned to the past as often as he could and during the last forty years of his life traveled from one historic summer resort to the next, painting picturesque villages and towns throughout New England. The past is therefore a living presence in Hassam’s art. While his village scenes may appear quaint, they are also active statements about the importance of traditional New England values and institutions in an era of great change.
William H. Truettner and Roger B. Stein, editors, with contributions by Dona Brown, Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Judith K. Maxwell, Stephen Nissenbaum, Bruce Robertson, Roger B. Stein, and William H. Truettner Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory (Washington, D.C.; New Haven, Conn; and London: National Museum of American Art with Yale University Press, 1999)
Childe Hassam learned the value of hard work after his father’s hardware store burned to the ground and Hassam left school to work as a wood engraver. He made illustrations for newspapers in his hometown of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and began painting scenes of urban life in the 1880s. Ambitious and determined, Hassam settled in New York with his wife, Maude, and set to work painting the booming city. In the summer months he traveled around New England and to Appledore Island off the coast of New Hampshire. A sociable and extroverted character, Hassam surrounded himself with friends who enjoyed lively dinner parties that lasted late into the evenings. (Broun, “Childe Hassam’s America,” American Art, Fall 1999)
Childe Hassam, The South Ledges, Appledore, 1913, oil on canvas,
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.62 Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Every year, he and a circle of musicians, writers and other artists made an informal colony based at the home of his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter’s gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors he had adopted in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore’s brief summer. This painting evokes the leisurely, seasonal rhythms of America’s priveleged families in the last years before the Great War. A beautifully dressed woman shields her face from the sun; she looks down and away, as if absorbed in the song of a sandpiper, the island bird that inspired Celia Thaxter’s most famous children’s poem.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006 American Impressionism emerged in the late 1880s when a generation of American artists studied abroad to absorb the new palette and compositions that were modernizing painting in France. Landscapes and domestic scenes by these American Impressionists are as wonderfully fresh and sparkling as those by their more familiar French counterparts. These artists, attracted to the light and color of painting outdoors, celebrate a modern view of life as America entered the twentieth century.
Childe Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Every year, he and a circle of musicians, writers, and other artists made an informal colony based at the home of his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter’s gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors he had adopted in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore’s brief summer. Smithsonian American Art Museum: Commemorative Guide. Nashville, TN: Beckon Books, 2015.
Childe Hassam, Up the River, Late Afternoon, October, 1906, pastel on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.65
Childe Hassam, Noon above Newburgh, 1916, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.59
Childe Hassam, Thaxter’s Garden, 1892, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.54
This series continues tomorrow
Friday Photo of the Day
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
Sources
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Mary Cassatt – Ellen Mary Cassatt In A White Coat – 1896
Mary Cassatt – Under the Horse-Chestnut Tree – Google Art Project.
Mary Cassatt – Childhood in a Garden – 1901
Mary Cassatt – Portrait of Mrs. Currey; Sketch of Mr. Cassatt.jpg Oil, c. 1871, private collection. Mrs. Currey had worked for the Cassatt family. When Mary Cassatt returned home from Paris at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, she asked Mrs. Currey to pose for her and gave her the sketch. Superimposed (the canvas turned upside down) is a sketch of her father. Smithsoniam Insitution record.
Mary Cassatt Feeding the ducks c1894.
Feeding the ducks, ca. 1894, signiert Mary Cassatt, Kaltnadel und Aquatintaradierung in Farbe mit Monotypie auf Bütten, Darstellungsgröße 29,5 x 39,5 cm, Blattgröße 35 x 50 cm
This series continues tomorrow
Thursday Photo of the Day
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
Sources
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Born to a prominent Pennsylvania family, Mary Cassatt spent her artistic career in Europe. Though unmarried, she was no stranger to the family life she so often depicted: her parents and sister moved to Paris in 1877 and her two brothers and their families visited frequently. Today considered an Impressionist, Cassatt exhibited with such artists as Monet, Pissarro, and her close friend Degas, and shared with them an independent spirit, refusing throughout her life to be associated with any art academy or to accept any prizes. She stands alone, however, in her depictions of the activities of women in their worlds: caring for children, reading, crocheting, pouring tea, and enjoying the company of other women.
Elizabeth Chew Women Artists (brochure, Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)
Mary Cassatt was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The family soon settled in Philadelphia but traveled extensively through Europe during Mary’s childhood. Her father was a prominent investment banker and her brother, Alexander, became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
At fifteen, she was admitted to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and four years later moved to Paris where she studied briefly with Jean-Léon Gérôme, but chiefly educated herself by copying at the Louvre. In 1872, already under the artistic influence of Courbet and Manet, she established a studio in Spain, studied the work of Velázquez and Ribera, and produced a series of paintings of local subjects with strongly modeled features placed against dark backgrounds.
In the Salon of 1874, Edgar Degas saw a painting of Cassatt’s which prompted him to exclaim, “Voila! There is someone who feels as I do.” That same year, Cassatt noticed several Degas pastels in a shop window and wrote, “It changed my life! I saw art then as I wanted to see it.” Soon thereafter they met, beginning a friendship and artistic relationship that would last forty years.
Degas introduced her to other members of the emergent impressionist fraternity, and for nine years, as the only American, she continued to exhibit with them and help organize their shows. She always found their company congenial and stimulating, and as her most recent biographer points out, “for the first time Cassatt found people whose biting, critical, opinionated attitudes matched her own.”
It is noteworthy that both Cassatt and Degas preferred to call themselves “Independents” rather then “Impressionists”; both always insisted on the integrity of form in their painting, whereas Monet, Pissaro, and others tended to dissolve form into light. Like them, she initially employed a high-keyed palette applied in small touches of contrasting colors. However, over time, Cassatt’s style became less painterly, the forms more solidly monumental and placed within clear linear contours.
As a woman in nineteenth-century Paris, she lacked opportunity to depict the diverse subject matter available to her male colleagues: cafés, clubs, bordellos, and even the streets were not comfortably accessible to genteel ladies. The domestic realm, with occasional forays into the theater, became her field of activity. Women and children and family members were generally the subjects of her work, and she became chiefly known for her depictions of mothers and small children. In these “Madonna” paintings she sought to avoid anecdotalism and sentimentality, overcoming the limitations of her subject matter by endowing it with firm structural authority and subtle color interest.
In later years, her eyesight failing, she turned increasingly to pastels, as Degas had done under pressure of the same condition. Like Degas, she became a preeminent exponent of that difficult medium.
In 1872, Cassatt formed a close friendship with a young American in Paris, Louisine Elder, soon to become the wife of H. O. Havemeyer, the reigning “sugar baron” of the American Gilded Age. A woman of discriminating taste and formidable wealth, Louisine turned to her artist friend for guidance in assembling a collection of paintings. In time, they amassed a comprehensive array of impressionist work. Much of the collection was donated to American museums and contributed significantly toward the shaping of public taste and general acceptance of what has since become the most popular of all painting styles.
Emery Battis Artist Biographies for the exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000)
Mary Cassatt is best known for her paintings of mothers and children in relaxed, informal poses. She was the first American artist to associate and exhibit with the French impressionists in Paris. Cassatt first traveled to Europe with her family when she was eleven, and by the age of sixteen had decided to be a professional artist. Her family did not approve of this decision, but they eventually relented and allowed her to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. (Effeny, Cassatt, 1991) She did not like the formal training at the academy, however, and went back to France, finally settling there in the 1870s. She lived in Paris for most of her life, but considered herself an American and was proud of her Philadelphia roots. She was a close friend of the French painter Edgar Degas, who invited her to show with the impressionists in 1877. She “accepted with joy” and in this circle of friends felt that she first “began to live.” Cassatt pursued her painting in the remaining decades of the nineteenth century, and the 1890s became her most creative period. By 1915, however, diabetes compromised her eyesight and robbed her of the ability to paint for the last eleven years of her life.
Mary Cassatt, Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla, 1873, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Victoria Dreyfus, 1967.40
Mary Cassatt spent a few months in Spain in the early 1870s. She went first to Madrid, where she copied the paintings of the Spanish masters, then established a studio in Seville. She made a series of paintings of Spanish life that emphasized the beauty and dress of the local women. This piece was exhibited at the 1874 Paris Salon under the title Ida, where it attracted the attention of French impressionist Edgar Degas. On seeing the work of Cassatt for the first time, Degas commented, “C’est vrai. Voilá quelqu’un qui sent comme moi” (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).
Mary Cassatt, Sara in a Green Bonnet, ca. 1901, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.11
Mary Cassatt, The Caress, 1902, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1911.2.1
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
Sources
Smithsonian American Art Museum
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Born to a prominent Pennsylvania family, Mary Cassatt spent her artistic career in Europe. Though unmarried, she was no stranger to the family life she so often depicted: her parents and sister moved to Paris in 1877 and her two brothers and their families visited frequently. Today considered an Impressionist, Cassatt exhibited with such artists as Monet, Pissarro, and her close friend Degas, and shared with them an independent spirit, refusing throughout her life to be associated with any art academy or to accept any prizes. She stands alone, however, in her depictions of the activities of women in their worlds: caring for children, reading, crocheting, pouring tea, and enjoying the company of other women.
Elizabeth Chew Women Artists (brochure, Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)
Mary Cassatt was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The family soon settled in Philadelphia but traveled extensively through Europe during Mary’s childhood. Her father was a prominent investment banker and her brother, Alexander, became president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
At fifteen, she was admitted to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and four years later moved to Paris where she studied briefly with Jean-Léon Gérôme, but chiefly educated herself by copying at the Louvre. In 1872, already under the artistic influence of Courbet and Manet, she established a studio in Spain, studied the work of Velázquez and Ribera, and produced a series of paintings of local subjects with strongly modeled features placed against dark backgrounds.
In the Salon of 1874, Edgar Degas saw a painting of Cassatt’s which prompted him to exclaim, “Voila! There is someone who feels as I do.” That same year, Cassatt noticed several Degas pastels in a shop window and wrote, “It changed my life! I saw art then as I wanted to see it.” Soon thereafter they met, beginning a friendship and artistic relationship that would last forty years.
Degas introduced her to other members of the emergent impressionist fraternity, and for nine years, as the only American, she continued to exhibit with them and help organize their shows. She always found their company congenial and stimulating, and as her most recent biographer points out, “for the first time Cassatt found people whose biting, critical, opinionated attitudes matched her own.”
It is noteworthy that both Cassatt and Degas preferred to call themselves “Independents” rather then “Impressionists”; both always insisted on the integrity of form in their painting, whereas Monet, Pissaro, and others tended to dissolve form into light. Like them, she initially employed a high-keyed palette applied in small touches of contrasting colors. However, over time, Cassatt’s style became less painterly, the forms more solidly monumental and placed within clear linear contours.
As a woman in nineteenth-century Paris, she lacked opportunity to depict the diverse subject matter available to her male colleagues: cafés, clubs, bordellos, and even the streets were not comfortably accessible to genteel ladies. The domestic realm, with occasional forays into the theater, became her field of activity. Women and children and family members were generally the subjects of her work, and she became chiefly known for her depictions of mothers and small children. In these “Madonna” paintings she sought to avoid anecdotalism and sentimentality, overcoming the limitations of her subject matter by endowing it with firm structural authority and subtle color interest.
In later years, her eyesight failing, she turned increasingly to pastels, as Degas had done under pressure of the same condition. Like Degas, she became a preeminent exponent of that difficult medium.
In 1872, Cassatt formed a close friendship with a young American in Paris, Louisine Elder, soon to become the wife of H. O. Havemeyer, the reigning “sugar baron” of the American Gilded Age. A woman of discriminating taste and formidable wealth, Louisine turned to her artist friend for guidance in assembling a collection of paintings. In time, they amassed a comprehensive array of impressionist work. Much of the collection was donated to American museums and contributed significantly toward the shaping of public taste and general acceptance of what has since become the most popular of all painting styles.
Emery Battis Artist Biographies for the exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000)
Mary Cassatt is best known for her paintings of mothers and children in relaxed, informal poses. She was the first American artist to associate and exhibit with the French impressionists in Paris. Cassatt first traveled to Europe with her family when she was eleven, and by the age of sixteen had decided to be a professional artist. Her family did not approve of this decision, but they eventually relented and allowed her to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. (Effeny, Cassatt, 1991) She did not like the formal training at the academy, however, and went back to France, finally settling there in the 1870s. She lived in Paris for most of her life, but considered herself an American and was proud of her Philadelphia roots. She was a close friend of the French painter Edgar Degas, who invited her to show with the impressionists in 1877. She “accepted with joy” and in this circle of friends felt that she first “began to live.” Cassatt pursued her painting in the remaining decades of the nineteenth century, and the 1890s became her most creative period. By 1915, however, diabetes compromised her eyesight and robbed her of the ability to paint for the last eleven years of her life.
Henry Wolf, Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child, 1905, photomechanical wood engraving on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1973.130.220
Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing (poster), poster, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1969.65.26A
Mary Cassatt, The Banjo Lesson, ca. 1893, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Robert Tyler Davis Memorial Fund, 1981.100
This series continues tomorrow
Tuesday Photo of the Day
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
Sources SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Many of the items and collection are from the William Lascoff
Pharmacy that closed in 2002 on Lexington Avenue
Facticerie an exhibition that houses
Sudhir Gupta’s rare factice collection in Hackensack
Sudhir Gupta, who started collecting rare fragrance display bottles from a shop on Canal Street, has now set a Guinness World Record.
Gupta’s collection of factices — perfume bottles used for advertising purposes or department store displays that are generally empty or filled with water — is on display at an exhibit in Hackensack, New Jersey called Facticerie: The Factice Collection.
Factices are an entirely new category to The Guinness World Records, and the New Jersey exhibit will show Gupta’s record-size assortment of over 3,000 of the rare perfume bottle replicas, which are valued at $2,000 to $100,000 each, including models by brands such as Chanel, Estée Lauder, Guerlain and Andy Warhol.
The exhibit was designed by creative director Mercedes Acosta and opened on Thursday at 70 First Street in Hackensack, New Jersey, for free viewings by appointment. The space was modeled after the interior of iconic Upper East Side pharmacy, Lascoff Drugs, which closed its doors in 2012.
“Some would say it was love at first sight,” said Gupta of the first factice he laid his eyes on. It was a Nina Ricci L’air du Temps factice, and he came across it while dusting the basement of a perfume shop on Canal Street that he worked at to put himself through graduate school upon coming to the U.S. in the early ‘90s.
Because they’re not intended for consumer use, factices are not available for sale by any conventional means — and the L’air du Temps bottle Gupta found that day was no exception.
“I didn’t even know what it was,” said Gupta, who hails from Chandigarh, India, of the factice. Despite not having a strong interest in or knowledge of fragrance at the time, Gupta was immediately entranced by the bottle.
After inquiring to the shop owner he worked under about why the bottle was there — and what it would take to have it — the owner ultimately agreed to sell it to him for $2,000. A few dozen paychecks later, Gupta inaugurated his collection.
From then on, Gupta sourced the bottles where and when he could, trying his luck at flea markets, pharmacies like Lascoff Drugs and department stores such as Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus, making friends along the way who indulged his passion, helping him expand his collection via under-the-table exchanges.
“Every time I had any extra money, I would budget it toward that,” said Gupta, who would make deposits to secure factices from sources and then pay the remainder of what he owed over time.
While Gupta feels his stint at the perfume shop was a stroke of “destiny,” he ended up leaving shortly after purchasing the L’air du Temps factice, instead making a living independently buying and reselling hard-to-find fragrances, a gig that allowed him more avenues and freedom to grow his collection.
Today, highlights from the collection include a rare Guerlain Shalimar factice, one of two Parera Tentacion factices in the world and the most expensive factice of them all: a ’20s Caron Les Fontaines Baccarat from the estate of Madame Alexander, estimated to be valued at $100,000.
On June 6, the collection was inducted into the Guinness World Book of Records as the largest in the world to date, an honor Gupta had been eagerly awaiting confirmation of since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although factices are no longer manufactured by most companies, Gupta continues to grow his collection to this day, having made a name for himself as an antiquarian when it comes to the rare bottles.
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
I WILL BE OFF SAILING FOR THE NEXT WEEKS (ON A LARGER VESSEL) ENJOY THE ISSUES AND SEE YOU SOON. JUDYB
SAILING ON THE PIONEER FROM SOUTH STREET SEAPORT
WITH JAY AND FRIENDS!
WEEKEND PHOTO
GRAND CENTRAL TO TIMES SQUARE SHUTTLE ALL PROMOTING MOVIE “BULLET TRAIN” STARING BRAD PITT ANDY SPARBERG, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, HARA REISER ALL GOT IT RIGHT
You should take F to 42 street, get off at back of train, take staircase to connector to Shuttle,1.2,3,N,R,W walkway to the Times Square Station.
In simple words to get to Grand Central take F to 42 St, go upstairs to Shuttle and you will be at Grand Central in less that 20 minutes!!!!
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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
With summer’s end just around the corner, be sure to enjoy some of New York City’s best public art installations this September while the weather remains ideal for walking outside. Much of the artwork on display this month draws from the rich cultural diversity of New York City. Viewers of Wendy Red Star’s painting series Travels Pretty can learn more about the history of Native American women while Somos Uno provides insight into the disparate cultures that make up the District 25 community. Head to Montefiore Square to marvel at a public mural representing the essence of the Hamilton Heights community or Times Square to view Midnight Moments‘ new film on the connections between bodies of water and living beings.
In-process image of Ancestor by Bharti Kher. Photo by Chris Roque. Courtesy of the artist, UAP, Public Art Fund.
Gracing Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza this year is Ancestor, an 18-foot-tall patinated bronze sculpture created by New Delhi and London-based artist Bharti Kher. Ancestor is part of Kher’s ongoing Intermediaries series in which small, broken clay figurines of humans, animals, and mythical beings are reassembled into hybrid figures in defiance of fixed identity norms. The sculpture depicts a universally recognizable mother figure, allowing viewers to connect their experience viewing the artwork with their own cultural and personal pasts and futures. At the same time, the figure’s design is also culturally specific with the woman being draped in a sari with a small child hiding in its folds and hair in the style of a multi-lobbed bun with a braid.
Inspiration for the piece was drawn from the Indic and global traditions of creator deities that combine male and female into one single philosophical form — in direct contention with our current understanding of gender-based identities. At the same time, Ancestor is a feminine figure at heart, being adorned with the heads of 23 children as a representation of a mother’s role as a keeper of wisdom and eternal source of creation and refuge. “I invite viewers to leave their wishes, dreams, and prayers with Ancestor; and to pass on their wisdom of living and love to the next generation,” artist Bharti Kher said. “She is the keeper of all memories and time. A vessel for you to travel into the future, a guide to search and honor our past histories, and a companion — right here, right now — in New York City
Somos Uno by Mark Saldana. Courtesy of the artist.
Somos Uno is a series of 12 vibrant murals painted on the outside of tree pots inside Travers Park. Created by artist Mark Saldana, Somos Uno is inspired by the disparate cultures that make up the District 25 community in Queens. For Saldana, conserving the traditional practices of immigrants such as farming, sewing, and pottery in his artwork is essential. As a result, Somos Uno features two series of designs: One set represents the connection and harmony between vegetation, the natural world, and humans, while the other focuses on the talent and skills immigrants carry over from their former lives into their new day-to-day activities.
In the center of one of the murals, two hands are cupped together with a heart, leaves, and the words “somos vida, luz, amor,, cultura, y communidad,” which translates to “we are life, light, love, culture, and community.” Through the implementation of these phrases Saldana’s piece works to inspire members of the local community to be proud and vocal about their heritage. In another mural, a woman can be seen turning a cog while surrounded by music notes, a coffee cup, and leaves — directly referencing the occupation of many immigrant workers in New York City. Somos Uno is presented by New Immigrant Community Empowerment and can be viewed through July 6, 2023.
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
SOURCES
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
GRANTS
CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE JULIE MENIN DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
DAY TRIP STEAMER GENERAL SLOCUM CAUGHT FIRE AND CAPSIZED OFF NORTH BROTHER ISLAND IN 1904. LARGEST LOSS OF LIFE IN NEW YORK UNTIL 9/11. Bill, Ed Litcher, M. Frank, Gloria Herman & Hara Reiser all got it right.
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
Mailing address: Nick Golebiewski Studio Building 280, Suite 610, Brooklyn Navy Yard Brooklyn, NY 11205
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The Cartographic Branch at the National Archives is home to over one million ship plans, with records spanning more than 15 distinct Record Groups and over 25 separate series. These drawings are among the most requested records from researchers in the Cartographic Branch.
The National Archives holds ship engineering drawings for a majority of vessels commissioned by the United States Navy dating from the 1790s through the Korean War era. These drawings mostly consist of inboard and outboard profiles, deck plans, and sections, although additional general arrangement drawings exist for some ships.
The majority of ship plans held by the Cartographic Branch can be found within Record Group 19: Records of the Bureau of Ships. Established in 1940, the Bureau of Ships was responsible for the construction and maintenance of the ships of the US Navy.
FULLER BUILDING, MADISON AVENUE AND 57th STREET HOME OF NEW YORK’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS GALLERIES LAURA HUSSEY AND CLARA BELLA GOT IT RIGHT!
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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
Sources
Photos, from above: drawings of Naval Vessels and Equipment, 1939-1945, U.S. Ship of the Line Ware #17; and USS Oklahoma (BB-37): booklet of General Plans – Cover & Title Page / General Dimensions & Data / Inboard Profile (National Archives).
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The late 1920s and 1930s were crucial years in New York’s rise as an international artistic center. Cultural contacts between Europe and the United States multiplied. American artists who had studied in Paris returned with fresh ambitions; dollar rich patrons were willing to finance new initiatives; the First World War had unsettled European artists and gallerists, many of whom settled in New York. They were joined by others who fled the Nazi threat. Manhattan was turning into a Mecca of modernism where a multi-national cohort of artists, dealers and investors mixed and mingled.
By our standards the art world was relatively small. At any one time in that epoch, there were probably fewer than fifteen galleries active in New York with only a handful concentrating on contemporary art. A pioneering role was played by Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery on Fifth Avenue. Operational since 1905, the gallery introduced the Parisian avant-garde to an American audience. In modernist Manhattan, Stieglitz was the Godfather.
A characteristic aspect of this period was the interaction between European gallerists and a generation of aspiring American artists. Stieglitz had set a pattern. His exhibition program consisted of introducing French modernists while simultaneously pushing a circle of up-and-coming local artists. Over time, the American presence became more prominent.
In the process, calls rang out to challenge “conservative” museums and establish an institution devoted to modern art. On November 8, 1929, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened its doors. Under guidance of its first director Alfred H. Barr, a productive working relationship was established with Manhattan galleries. In the midst of these developments towered the figure of Julien Levy.
The Harvard Experience
Born in New York on January 22, 1906, into an affluent Jewish family (his father was a real estate developer and art collector), Julien Levy attended Harvard where he studied English literature before changing to the subject of museum administration under Paul J. Sachs, one of seven founding members of MoMA.
He began his foray into the avant-garde during his years at Harvard. The environment was an inspiring one. Fellow students from the mid-1920s onward included Alfred Barr; James Thrall Soby who built up a famous collection of modern art at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; and Arthur Everett “Chick” Austin, who would become director of the Atheneum and organizer of the first Picasso retrospective in America.
A member of this Harvard group of modernists, Levy became an avid collector with a lasting affinity for film and photography. Eager to exploit his own creative potential, he became frustrated by his father’s refusal to back him financially in making experimental films. He dropped out of Harvard in 1927 (one semester prior to graduation) and went to Paris intent on working with Man Ray.
Ironically, it was Edgar Levy’s love for art that caused his son’s departure. In 1926, alerted by Julien, he acquired from the Brummer Gallery the marble Bird in Space (1923), the first in a series of iconic sculptures created over time by the Romanian-born French artist Constantin Brancusi.
It was on that particular occasion that Julien first encountered Marcel Duchamp, the legendary Dadaist artist and Surrealist sympathizer who represented the sculptor’s interests in America.
Brummer Gallery (East 57th Street)
A significant development in the art market of the early twentieth century was the role played by American collectors and their European suppliers. This occurrence was hurried along by the crippling economic effect of the First World War. The Old Continent was for sale.
Joseph Brummer was a Hungarian sculptor who, having left Budapest’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1904, settled in Paris. In 1909 he launched into a career of selling antiques, opening a gallery on Boulevard Raspail. When his brothers Imre and Ernest joined him, they traded as Brummer Frères.
With the onset of World War I, the property of all Austro-Hungarian and German enemy nationals was sequestered. Joseph and Imre moved to New York where they opened a gallery at 55 East 57th Street and cooperated until Imre’s death in 1928.
After the war, Ernest reopened his business in Paris. Until the beginning of the Second World War when Ernest joined Joseph in New York, the two branches worked together. The brothers flooded the American market with classical works of art and antiquities, but Joseph had other interests too.
At his premises he organized some of New York’s earliest exhibitions of contemporary French art. Joseph brought avant-garde art to Manhattan, including paintings by Picasso and Henri Rousseau (who painted his portrait in 1909), and sculptures by Aristide Maillol, Jacques Lipchitz, and others. His 1926 Constantin Brancusi show drew wide critical approval.
Weyhe Gallery (Lexington Avenue)
The meeting with Duchamp was a crucial moment in Julien Levy’s career. He left Harvard, joined Duchamp in February 1927, and set sail for Le Havre. Also making the journey was Robert McAlmon, author, drinking pal of James Joyce, and founder of Contact Editions in Paris where he published work by Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, amongst others.
During the crossing Levy and Duchamp became close. Once in Paris, the latter introduced his young friend to many figures in the Parisian avant-garde. He also joined the circle of expatriates. At a party thrown by Peggy Guggenheim, McAlmon introduced him to London-born artist and poet Mina Loy (her father had escaped anti-Semitism in Budapest). She was accompanied by her daughter. Levy and Joella Loy married in August 1927. From the outset, he was entranced by his mother-in-law’s artistic gifts and would help to promote her poetry and visual art throughout her career.
After three years in Paris, the couple returned to New York where Julien started work as an assistant in the print room of the Weyhe Gallery. Also known as Weyhe Gallery & Bookstore, this establishment was a print and art bookshop established in 1919 by German-born Erhard Weyhe who, after running a book business in London’s Charing Cross Road, had moved to New York just before the outbreak of the First World War. The firm operated from 1919 to 1923 at 710 Lexington Avenue, and from then on in a four-story townhouse further down the road at no. 794.
The Gallery served as a meeting place for dealers and collectors who were interested in modern art. When Levy arrived as an apprentice, the Gallery was directed by Weyhe’s assistant Carl Zigrosser, the son of an Austrian immigrant (later in his career Carl worked as Curator of Prints and Drawings at Philadelphia’s Museum of Art).
The Gallery specialized in contemporary prints and drawings, but Weyhe also collected and sold sculpture. At the time of Levy’s employment, Zigrosser organized in February/March 1928 the first solo exhibition of Alexander “Sandy” Calder’s wire sculpture. The event received considerable press coverage. Weyhe provided Levy with the practical experience of running a gallery, organizing exhibitions, and dealing with individual artists.
Julien Levy Gallery (Madison Avenue)
On November 2, 1931, funded by an inheritance from his mother, Julien opened the Levy Gallery at 602 Madison Avenue with an American Photography Retrospective Exhibition. The show was a tribute to Alfred Stieglitz, but Levy quickly realized that photography would not finance the running of the gallery and he was forced to shift his focus to modernist art.
On January 29, 1932, he presented the first exhibition of Surrealism in New York. Paying homage to Paris by naming the exhibition Surréalisme, the multi-media show featured painting, sculpture, collage, and photography. Levy introduced European artists to New York, whilst at the same time championing the work of young American painters.
The interaction between established European and young American artists was intriguing. In the period leading up to the exhibition, Joseph Cornell visited the gallery. After viewing a collection of collages by Max Ernst, he hurried home to construct his own works. For the cover of his book on Surrealism (1936), Levy used a Cornell collage of a boy trumpeting the word “Surrealism” that had been on display at the 1932 exhibition.
The show put the Levy Gallery on the map. Salvador Dali’s presence was largely responsible for the excitement. Key attraction was The Persistence of Memory (1931) which Julien had acquired during his stay in the French capital. It became the most discussed painting in the United States since Duchamp’s Nude descending a Staircase at the Armory Show in 1913.
Heydays & Legacy
Mina Loy was Levy’s mentor. She acted as his Paris representative and for the next five years she arranged the purchase and transportation of Surrealist art to Levy’s Gallery. In doing so, she became a central figure in the American reception of Surrealism.
Loy exhibited her own paintings at the Levy Gallery in 1933. Julien was keen to promote female talent and mounted exhibitions by Lee Miller, Katherine Dreier, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and others. Though the Gallery struggled financially, it developed a far-reaching reputation. In 1937, business was moved to 15 East 57th Street, where Levy mounted the first solo exhibition of the work of Frida Kahlo in November 1938. His eye for talent never let him down.
Mina Loy’s move to New York in 1937 ended her work as the gallery’s agent. Levy and Joella divorced in 1942, after which he remarried the artist Muriel Streeter. By that time, the world had changed. The bright Manhattan’s days of cosmopolitan exchanges were fading and so did Julien Levy’s passion as a gallerist. In 1949 he shut up shop, taught art history for a while, and retired to a farm in Connecticut where he wrote the Memoir of an Art Gallery (1977). He died there in February 1981.
As a gallerist, Levy set a blueprint by codifying the rituals of commerce (from press releases to boozy opening nights) and interaction between collectors, curators and critics to generate reviews and publicity. He also initiated a competitive working relationship with MoMA that was repeated in other major art centers where gallerists acted as scouts for new talent.
By the very nature of the institution, museums worked retrospectively. Having made an assessment of events and activities, curators looked beyond the immediate towards context and continuity. Levy’s Surréalisme of 1932 and subsequent solo shows of Surrealist artists laid the groundwork for MoMA’s comprehensive exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism in 1936/7. Although the event was rife with controversy and arguments between rival factions among the participants, it was nonetheless a groundbreaking attempt by Alfred Barr to present Dada as a historical movement.
Illustrations, from above: Berenice Abbot’s portrait of Julien Levy in Paris, 1927 (The MET, New York); Bird in Space, 1923 by Constantin Brancusi (The MET, New York); Portrait of Joseph Brummer, 1909 by Henri Rousseau (National Gallery, London); Wire Portrait of Erhard Weyhe, 1928 by Alexander Calder (Whitney Museum of American Art); curved walls in the Julien Levy Gallery at 15 East 57th Street, late 1930s; The Persistence of Memory, 1931 by Salvador Dalí (Museum of Modern Art, New York); Joseph Cornell’s cover for Julien Lev’s book Surrealism (1936: Black Sun Press); and Frida Kahlo’s first American solo exhibition in November 1938 at the Levy Gallery, East 57th Street.
TRAM STATION IN 1980’S SEE ALEXANDER’S DEPARTMENT STORE IN BACKGROUND LONG STAIRCASE LEADING TO STATION PLATFORM PAY PHONES ALONG SIDEWALK
HARA REISER, NANCY BROWN, THOM HEYER, GLORIA HERMAN, ED LITCHER AND ARLENE BESSENOFF
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:
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: Berenice Abbot’s portrait of Julien Levy in Paris, 1927 (The MET, New York); Bird in Space, 1923 by Constantin Brancusi (The MET, New York); Portrait of Joseph Brummer, 1909 by Henri Rousseau (National Gallery, London); Wire Portrait of Erhard Weyhe, 1928 by Alexander Calder (Whitney Museum of American Art); curved walls in the Julien Levy Gallery at 15 East 57th Street, late 1930s; The Persistence of Memory, 1931 by Salvador Dalí (Museum of Modern Art, New York); Joseph Cornell’s cover for Julien Lev’s book Surrealism (1936: Black Sun Press); and Frida Kahlo’s first American solo exhibition in November 1938 at the Levy Gallery, East 57th Street.
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