JEROME MYERS: ANGELS OF THE FESTA

JEROME MYERS: ANGELS OF THE FESTA

by Joan K. Yanni

Angels of the Festa

Angels of the Festa by Jerome Myers is an enigmatic painting, with its dark background, subdued colors and flattened perspective.  Its theme is a religious celebration, and its people are taking part with a sense of subdued joy.   

"Festa" is the Italian word for feast, celebration, or saint's day.  And among the Italian Catholic immigrants who lived on New York City's lower East Side, their saint's feast day was the time for celebration.  Usually the saint had been the patron saint of their province in Italy; and yearly, on a summer Sunday, they held a street festival in his or her honor.

A procession after the last Mass started the day.  Men of the parish carried the statue of the saint set upon a paten, along with smaller statues from the church and banks of candles in wedding-cake arrangements. In the afternoon, the festivities began. Always there was ethnic food and socializing.  Often there was a band concert.  It was time for families to enjoy their religion, their friends and each other.

In our painting, darkness has come and the festa is about to end. The procession and musicians have disbanded in front of a statue of the honored saint surrounded by candles, banners, and the Italian flag. The saint is a bishop, as we can see by his miter, or hat.  Perhaps he is San Gennaro (St. Jerome), whose feast is still celebrated in September on New York's Bleeker Street.  But the name of the church, which can be seen in the painting, is St. Ciro, a rather obscure saint but important enough to Italian immigrants to have a church named after him. The location of a statue is puzzling.  It seems to be in a free-standing shrine, since onlookers lean out of upstairs windows on either side.  Little girls in their best dresses—part of the "angels" title—hold lighted candles as neighbors and families look on.  And in the dark sky above the festa, two blissful angels—this time the kind with wings—can be seen throwing roses onto the crowd below.

Jerome Myers (1867-1940), the painter of this scene, was born into poverty in Petersburg, VA. 

He managed to get to New York City when he was eighteen, and while he worked by day as a sign painter and photo-engraver, he took evening art courses at Cooper Union and at the Art Student's League.  He studied under George de Forest Brush and learned from the works of old masters, but his style and subject matter were his own.  He felt a kinship with the city's poor, and they became his theme—one frowned upon by the academicians.

Myers had chosen drawings, etchings, and pastels as his medium; but in 1902 he met the noted art dealer William MacBeth, who liked his work, became his dealer, and encouraged him to turn to painting.  He had his first one-man exhibition in 1908, began to exhibit widely, and joined John Sloan and his circle, also painters of the city.

Myers, Henri and Sloan were among the artists who showed in the 1910 exhibition of Independent Artists, the first non-juried show ever held by and for American artists.  Myers also helped to organize the Armory Show of 1913.  He had hoped that the show would promote American artists; but Arthur B. Davies invited European painters to participate, and the Europeans, the Cubists in particular, stole the show.

Though Myers never was a huge success in selling his paintings, he eventually received prizes from the National Academy and the Carnegie Institute.  His pictures of the slums were idealized, sympathetic and dignified.  His children, unlike Luks's dirty urchins, were clean and happy and in their best clothes.  His people exude a spiritual happiness and a hope for the future.

Angels of the Festa can be compared to any of the Ashcan paintings.  Myers' loose brush stroke is similar to that of Sloan in Election Night, and both are paintings of celebrations.  The painting can also be used with Lawrence's Summer Street Scene in Harlem, or discussed in connection with ceremonies in the African gallery.

Source:  Curatorial files; Bennard B. Perlman, The Immortal Eight.

FIELD: THE EMBARKATION OF ULYSSES

FIELD: THE EMBARKATION OF ULYSSES

by Joan K. Yanni

The painting recently installed in the Folk Art Gallery is an eye-catcher.  In brilliant colors it presents a scene that looks like a stage setting: architectural towers are outlined against a vivid blue sky.  Men in colorful costumes stand on the decks of sailing ships.  Banners are unfurled, trumpeters play, and women in classical garb watch at the top of the steps leading to the sea.  The painting is The Embarkation of Ulysses by Erastus Salisbury Field.

Ulysses was the hero of Homer's Odyssey, one of the Greeks who sailed to Troy to rescue Helen, carried off by Paris. Ulysses and the Greeks then defeated the Trojans through the trick of the wooden horse.  After the fall of Troy, the Greeks sailed home—but it took Ulysses ten years to get there.  When he finally got back to Greece, he found his faithful wife Penelope surrounded by suitors, whom she had kept at bay by promising to choose a new husband when she finished her tapestry, then weaving by day and unraveling by night.

(This painting, on anonymous loan, is of the glorious departure of the Greeks for Troy.  It is a fascinating painting by an intriguing painter). 

Erastus Salisbury Field (1805-1900) was born in Leverett, Massachusetts.  His parents encouraged his sketching of family activities as he grew up, and he went on to study briefly in New York City with inventor-painter Samuel F.B. Morse.  Once home again, he painted portraits; and in his early works Morse's influence can be seen.  Field soon developed his own style, however.  He had a special insight into his sitters’ personalities, and he was able to show their inner spirit as well as intricate details of their clothing, hair styles and homes.

During the 1830s Field was able to support his wife Phoebe and their daughter Henrietta by working as an itinerant painter in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  Some of the best work of his career was painted at this time.

Between 1841 and 1848 Field moved to New York City.  Here, in addition to portraits, he began

to paint history pictures which he copied from engravings. Our Embarkation of Ulysses dates from this time.  It was taken from an engraving, City of Ancient Greece with the Return of the Victorious Armament by the English artist J. W. Appleton, published in London in 1840.  (The engraving, in turn, had been copied from a painting by W. Linton.)          

While in New York, Field also learned the new art of photography (the daguerreotype had been introduced into this country in 1839 by Samuel Morse).

In 1849 the painter was called back to Massachusetts to take care of his ailing father's farm.  Though he still painted, photography had lessened the demand for painted portraits.  Field began to take photographs of his subjects to reduce sitting time, and painted from these images.  Consequently, his later portraits, though realistic, lack the spark of his earlier works.

In 1872 Field conceived the idea for the masterpiece of his old age.  His painting The Historical Monument of the American Republic, which measured 115" x 158", was completed in 1876 on the 100th anniversary of American independence.  It represents history in the grand manner:  towers of varying architectural styles (some similar to those in our painting) rise in the air, and each is keyed to a major event in American history; each national hero is represented.  Field had hoped that his Historical Monument painting would be turned into sculpture, but that was not to happen.

A mildly eccentric painter watched over by his equally eccentric daughter, Field spent his last days in Plumtrees, Massachusetts,.  His legacy is a body of work that reveals the character, taste and look of his New England world, ending with a huge painting of an idealized American dream.

Source:  Black, Mary, Erastus Salisbury Field, Springfield, MA 1894.  Beryl Smith, assistant librarian from Rutgers University, located the image of the source of our painting.

RED JACKET, ORATOR OF THE SENECA

RED JACKET, ORATOR OF THE SENECA

by Joan K. Yanni

Red Jacket

A painting of the Seneca chief Red Jacket (2.91L) is often used in tours centered on Rochester and its history.  The portrait, painted by John L. Mathies, is a striking one—the chief is clad in a red jacket and wears a large silver medal.  Red Jacket was born in 1758 (?) in Canoga, NY, and died January 20, 1830 in Seneca Village, Buffalo.  He was a magnificent orator, and his speeches saved his position as chief of his tribe more than once.  He announced often that he hated the white man; but he fought on the side of the British during the American Revolution, and, both in and out of battle, he wore red coats given him by the English.  After the Revolution, he became a staunch friend of George Washington, whom he admired because of Washington’s fair treatment of the Iroquois.  Washington gave him a silver medal (shown in the painting), which he wore constantly.  He fought for America in the War of 1812.

Red Jacket urged his people to hold on to their tribal customs and religion. He opposed missionaries living on Indian lands, and vainly attempted to preserve Indian jurisdiction over criminal acts committed on Indian property.  The Rochester Boy Scout Council is named Otetiana, Red Jacket’s tribal name, and a school district in Manchester is named after him—though students who come here for tours often have no idea that their school is named after a famous Seneca chief.

The medal in the painting is still in existence—in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.  After Red Jacket’s death, it was given to his nephew Jimmy Johnson, a fellow member of the Wolf clan and a preacher at Tonowanda.  Ely S. Parker received it from Johnson, and Parker’s heirs passed it on to the Historical Society.  The medal is a large oval, 6 3/4 inches high and 5 inches wide.  If we look closely at the medal in our painting, we can see that an Indian wearing a medal and holding a peace pipe is on the left, and George Washington is on the right, facing him.  The arms and crest of the United States are on the reverse side.

JOHN L. MATHIES was a portrait painter born in Canandaigua in 1816.  Around 1825 he and a friend named William Page established a short-lived art gallery in Rochester.  Though Page left for New York City a year later, Mathies stayed on as a grocer, patent agent and hotelkeeper. His portrait of Red Jacket hung in the Clinton Hotel, which he owned.

Note: The Senecas were part of the Iroquois confederation founded in the 16^th century in the region around central New York State. The original family consisted of five tribes: Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga and Seneca and was known as the League of Five Nations.  In the early 1700s, the Tuscaroras, an Iroquoian tribe from North Carolina, immigrated to New York, were formally admitted to the confederacy, and the name of the league was changed to the League of Six Nations.

FLANAGAN'S FAWN

FLANAGAN’S FAWN

by Marie Via

Note: reprinted from the Averell Council newsletter, 1991

FAWN

One of the easily overlooked treasures of the Gallery's collection is John B. Flanagan’s (1895-1942) small granite Fawn (74.2) nestled among the ferns in the Sculpture Pavilion.  Its rough surface and compressed fetal form give the impression of an animal emerging from some secret place within the rock, rather than being carved from it.  Indeed, the artist spent long hours combing the fields near Woodstock, NY for stones that approximated the shape of the figure he had in mind, which he then "released" from the rock through subtle shaping.

Animals were Flanagan’s favorite subjects, and he preferred the stubbornness of stone to the "deadly facility" of wood.  His works are best understood when seen from all points of view; their rounded shapes curve back upon themselves to express the artist's fascination with the circle, an ancient symbol of eternity.

Flanagan’s brief life was marked by hardship. His father died in 1990, when Flanagan was five, forcing his poverty- stricken mother to place the boy in an orphanage for a number of years. At 19 he enrolled at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and held down three jobs to support himself, his mother, and his brother.  He moved to New York, and after months of sleeping in the subway was rescued by the generosity of painter Arthur B. Davies, who gave him a job and helped him secure gallery representation.

The artist's existence became devoted almost solely to freeing "the image in the rock."  This absorption led to a nervous breakdown in 1934, after which he was confined to a sanitarium for seven months and not allowed to work.  He sculpted madly upon his release, drinking heavily to obliterate exhaustion.  A few years later, he was the victim of a hit-and-run accident; a series of brain surgeries could not fully restore his powers of coordination, speech, and balance.  Suffering a deep despair over his inability to work, Flanagan committed suicide in 1942, just six months before his scheduled retrospective at the Bucholz Gallery in New York.

 

ST. SEBASTIAN

ST. SEBASTIAN

       by Joan K. Yanni

St.Sebastian

A recent acquisition joined St. Peter, St. Barbara, and other MAG sculptures in the Northern Renaissance gallery. St. Sebastian (91.1) was purchased for the Gallery's permanent collection after a long search for a noteworthy example of Gothic sculpture from late medieval Germany.

The statue is an exceptionally fine piece of Bavarian work from around 1470.  It has been associated with two sculptures from the high altar of the church of the Cistercian Abbey of Furstenfeld, near Munich, and is attributed to the Master of Furstenfeld, thought to be sculptor Ulrich Neunhauser (1405-1472).

The piece is 54 inches high, carefully carved of linden wood, and was once polychromed.  Its face is serene and thoughtful, its hair soft and flowing.  The youthful figure is covered by a mantle which is held across the waist by the right hand, as if to cover the saint's nakedness.  The saint's left wrist is tied to a branch; the hand is missing.  The bare left arm and the upper body show marks of arrows, sign of Sebastian's martyrdom.  The toes of the left foot and the arrows, once jutting from the figure, are also missing.  Under the garment, the right leg crosses over the left in a graceful, slightly forward movement.

Since the back of the statue is hollowed out and the legs and figure elongated, it was no doubt made to be placed near—or against—a wall and to be seen from below.  It was probably once part of an altarpiece, but it is not clear whether it was to stand alone or as part of a larger composition.

Though details about St. Sebastian cannot be verified, he is said to have been born in Milan in the third century.  He was an officer in Diocletian's Imperial Guard, which he entered in order to give help to the Christians being persecuted by Rome.When it was discovered that he was a Christian, he was sentenced to be slain with arrows.  Though he was left for dead by his executioners, the arrows had not pierced a vital organ (a matter not always noted by painters and sculptors), and he was found and nursed back to health by a woman named Irene, widow of another martyr.  When his survival was discovered, he was battered to death with cudgels and his body thrown into the Roman sewer.

Sebastian is a favorite subject of Renaissance and Counter-Reformation artists and was often used as a vehicle for portraying the male nude.  He is usually shown pierced with arrows, often with a soldier's helmet and shield at his feet.  Some paintings reveal a background of the Palatine Hill in Rome, where his death was said to have taken place.

Since the ancients believed that Apollo's arrows caused disease, and since Sebastian escaped death by arrow, he was thought to be one of the saints who could protect against pestilence.

Docents can use the statue in tours on "Adventures in the Ancient World" or on any tours of sculpture or European art.  It can be compared to the sculptures of St. Peter, St. Barbara and others now in the same gallery, or to the Spanish crucifix and the statues of Mary and John in the Fountain Court.  Or Sebastian and his arrows, though missing, could be used on a tour of clues to the saints:  Peter's key, Catherine's wheel, Francis's stigmata, Barbara's tower, Elizabeth's bread, Magdalene's ointment jar, etc.

Sources:  Curatorial files; Hall, James:  Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, Harper and Rowe, 1974.  For further information see Baxendall, Michael, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1981.

 

TONY SMITH: PLAYGROUND

PLAYGROUND

TONY SMITH: PLAYGROUND

by Joan K. Yanni

One of MAG’s outdoor sculptures that has been a favorite ever since it was installed in 1970 is Tony Smith’s Playground (70.57).

The five-foot high steel sculpture came to MAG partly as a gift of the artist and partly through the Marion Stratton Gould fund.  Its name and mysterious look invite children to climb on it.  (But docents are asked not to permit this because of the liability which might be incurred by the Gallery. Walk under it, maybe?)

Smith represents the best of the minimal sculptors of the ‘60s, whose works are sometimes called "primary structures."  He creates simple, massive, geometric forms which have a dignity and strength reminiscent of ancient monuments.  Former MAG director Harris Prior, in a letter to the Gallery art committee urging the acquisition of the piece, described it as resembling a "great claw which has survived from some earlier civilization."  Yet the sculpture has a familiar presence, a stability that reassures.

Tony Smith, painter, architect, sculptor, (not to be confused with David) was born in 1912 in South Orange, New Jersey.  Ill with tuberculosis as a child, he amused himself by making Pueblo villages out of medicine boxes.  His father and grandfather ran an iron foundry, and Tony learned to love "black iron" in its natural state as it comes from the rolling mill.

He attended the Art Students League in New York City form 1933 to 1936, then Chicago's New Bauhaus School.  In 1938, though he had no formal training in architecture, he joined Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin as an apprentice and worked with him for two years. 

Smith spent the next 20 years painting and working on architectural commissions of his

own.  He taught classes in art and three- dimensional drawing at New York University, Pratt Institute, Bennington, and Hunter.  Bob Goodnough and Alfred Leslie were his students.

By 1960 he was dissatisfied with both painting and architecture.  He disliked catering to the whims of his painting patrons and seeing secondary buyers make changes in his houses.  He returned to the permanence of the box shapes and the iron of his youth.

His career from then on is an example of the suddenness with which even a known artist can be "discovered."  His first piece of sculpture was shown in 1963, and he had his first one-man show of that medium at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia only two years later

Though Smith was a friend of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Jackson Pollock, he always worked independently.  He was said to be a minimalist, but he noted that while the minimalists worked toward a preconceived plan, he did not.

The impact of his works depends on their unfinished roughness, bulk, and self containment, all emphasized by matte black surfaces.  Strength, mystery, and stability are inherent in this design; yet the large, flowing surfaces are filled with energy.

Smith died of a heart attack in January, 1981.  In his obituary, Time magazine quoted his own description of his work:  "My sculptures are on the edge of dreams; they come close to the unconscious in spite of their geometry."

References:  Curatorial files and Lippard, Lucy:  Tony Smith, New York, Harry Abrams, 1972; Tony Smith, Exhibition catalog, Maryland University Art Gallery, College Park, MD., 1971.

McENERY: A ROCHESTER CONNECTION

McENERY: A ROCHESTER CONNECTION

by Joan K. Yanni

Whether we discuss the Ashcan School or women in art, one painting demands attention: Woman with Ermine Collar (83.13) by Kathleen McEnery (Cunningham).

Woman with Ermine Collar

Kathleen McEnery (1885-1971) was known to many Rochesterians—even some docents!  She was a friend of Charlotte Whitney Allen, Hildegard Watson, Helen Ellwanger, Clayla Ward, Fritz Trautman—to name a few.  She was a member of the MAG art committee from 1945 to 1971, and was named an honorary life member of the MAG Board in 1927.  She was said to be elegant and slightly arrogant and a great conversationalist—and she hosted formal luncheons at which she personally tossed salad at the table.

McEnery was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  She studied at New York's Pratt Institute, then became a student of Robert Henri, first at the New York School of Art and later (the summers of 1906 and 1908) with his class in Spain.  When Henri implied that she had enough formal classes, she went to Paris, living in a pension with an older cousin as chaperon.  Woman with Ermine Collar was painted there.

After a productive period of work in Paris, she returned to NYC and rented a studio with other artists on the upper West Side.  In 1913 artist friend Leon Kroll submitted two of her works to the Armory Show; both were accepted.  They were rather daring for a woman of that era:  Going to the Bath was a study of two female nudes, and The Dream, a half-length female nude.  Both are now owned by the National Museum of American Art.

In 1914 McEnery married Francis E. Cunningham, whom she had met through his cousin, Rufis Dryer, an artist who was also a Henri student.  Cunningham was part of the

 Cunningham Carriage  Factory in  Rochester  (the source of our Aurora weathervane), which made carriages, then automobiles and armored cars and farm machinery.

McEnery continued to paint regularly in Rochester, even after the births of her daughter and two sons, in a studio she had built onto her home.  Eventually her interest in painting gave way to her family needs and social responsibilities.  She was among the founders of the Harley School and had been interested in the Women's Suffrage movement.  Her last exhibit was held at the Ferragil Art Gallery, NYC, in the early 1930s.  She died in 1971 at the age of 85.  A memorial exhibition of 30 paintings was organized by the Gallery in her honor in 1972.

Today the largest body of her work is owned by her family, particularly her daughter Joan Cunningham Williams and her son Peter Cunningham.  MAG owns six of her works.  Two remain in the Cunningham house, now part of the Museum and Science Center; a portrait of former RPO concert master Eugene Goosens hangs in the Eastman School of Music; and a portrait of Charlotte Whitney Allen is in the Eastman Theatre.  There are probably more of her paintings in Rochester, but they are not on record in our archives.

Woman with Ermine Collar can be used in many tours:  women in art, Rochester art (along with the C. W. Allen collection of Calders and the Watson collection of sculptures) and the Ashcan school.  McEnery's painting has a modern look to it:  the figure is at the front of the canvas, looking directly at the viewer; the background is dark, like that in many of Henri's portraits.  Who is the woman?  So far she is a mystery.  Does she look like a lady, dressed to go to tea?  Or is she a Paris prostitute with worn shoes and shabby dress?  Look and decide.

Source:  Curatorial files.