Art History

American Sporting Prints: 19th Century Horses & Horsemen

May 17, 2022 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, as early as 1829, had pictures of noted horses, engraved by well-known steel-gravers from paintings by Alvan Fisher [1792-1863] and J. Cone [possibly J. Cone Ruitiar]. A few years later the New York Spirit of the Times was issuing engravings from paintings principally by Edward Troye [1808-1874].

It all amounts to a gallery of horse notables: Fashion, Glencoe, Lightning, Shark, Leviathan, Monarch, and down the list. There are interesting side-lights on the costume of the boys holding their equine charges, one with an Eton jacket and a cap much like that worn by the American troops during the Mexican War, another brave in Hessian boots and epaulets. It is, however, principally the quicker lithographic process that pictured His Majesty the Horse. [Read more…] about American Sporting Prints: 19th Century Horses & Horsemen

Art of Edward Lange Project Launched With Website, Events

May 9, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Preservation Long Island has announced the Art of Edward Lange Project, a collaborative effort to reexamine the life and art of Edward Lange (1846–1912), a German immigrant and prolific landscape painter who worked in and around Huntington, Long Island during the 1870s and 1880s. Lange sketched and painted town centers, local businesses, and private residences. [Read more…] about Art of Edward Lange Project Launched With Website, Events

Four Nymphs, a Satyr and Manhattan’s Ladies’ Mile

May 8, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Until the mid-1860s the Fifth Avenue area around Madison Square was Manhattan’s “aristocratic” heart. Its brownstone mansions were occupied by the city’s elite. The gradual incursion of commerce into this residential haven started with high-class hotels.

In 1864 Hoffmann House was one of the first to open its doors. Owned by Cassius H. Read, it was located on the corner of 25th Street & Broadway and contained tree hundred rooms with all the latest conveniences. The establishment proudly advertised its lavish furnishings, carefully chosen artworks, and refined French (Parisian) cuisine. At a time that hotel living was becoming a fashionable alternative to owning a family mansion for wealthy New Yorkers, Hoffmann House was recommended as the most comfortable and homelike residence in the metropolis.

During the 1880s the hotel’s “grand salon” became one of New York’s “secretive” attractions for a very specific reason. [Read more…] about Four Nymphs, a Satyr and Manhattan’s Ladies’ Mile

Life and Artistic Legacy of Sidney Simon

April 22, 2022 by Clare Sheridan Leave a Comment

On the April episode of Crossroads of Rockland History we explored the life and artistic legacy of Sidney A. Simon (1917–1997). On the occasion of an exhibition of his works at the Blue Hill Art and Cultural Center (Pearl River, NY), two of Simon’s children, Teru Simon and Mark Simon, joined Clare Sheridan to share memories of their father and their own recollections of growing up on South Mountain Road in Rockland County. [Read more…] about Life and Artistic Legacy of Sidney Simon

George Deem, Bulldozers and Stalinist Suppression

April 11, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

Manhattan artist George Deem is remembered for referencing the history of painting by re-imagining Old Masters in a contemporary context. He re-configured iconic pictorial images through visual ploys such as repetition and erasure, or through the addition of components of contemporary life and art. [Read more…] about George Deem, Bulldozers and Stalinist Suppression

Artists & Intellectuals: The Women of South Mountain Road, Rockland County

March 30, 2022 by Clare Sheridan Leave a Comment

To celebrate Women’s History Month (March 2022), Crossroads of Rockland History focused our attention on the women of South Mountain Road (Rockland County) who, like their male counterparts, were gifted artists and intellectuals.

Historical Society of Rockland County’s Executive Director Susan Deeks joined Clare Sheridan to discuss some of these notable women and why they deserve a prominent place in the history of American arts and letters. Lita Hornick, Martha Ryther, Lotte Lenya, Eva Zeisel, Bessie Breuer and Mary Mowbray-Clarke were discussed. [Read more…] about Artists & Intellectuals: The Women of South Mountain Road, Rockland County

Emil Otto Hoppé: Vanguard Photography in London and New York

March 28, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 2 Comments

During the 1920s and 1930s, Emil Otto Hoppé was one of the most sought-after photographers in the world. His studio on Cromwell Place, South Kensington, was a magnet for the rich and famous. For years he actively led the emerging photography scene on both sides of the Atlantic, exhibiting his work at the best galleries in London, New York, and elsewhere.

Having produced over thirty photographically-illustrated books, he established himself as a pioneering figure in photographic art. Yet, by the time of his death in 1972, his name and reputation were almost completely forgotten. [Read more…] about Emil Otto Hoppé: Vanguard Photography in London and New York

The Beauty of Bricks: Amsterdam, Delft & Manhattan

March 16, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

In his 1653 poem on “The Character of Holland,” a piece of stereotypical English propaganda that was written in an era of fierce Anglo-Dutch economic rivalry, poet and politician Andrew Marvell ridiculed the Low Countries as being composed of “undigested vomit from the sea.”

The satirist did not mention the fact that out of this appalling spew the Dutch created bricks that were used by architects to build their characteristic cities which, in turn, inspired the flourishing genre of the cityscape in seventeenth century painting. Both bricks and building skills were at the time exported to England and across the Atlantic. [Read more…] about The Beauty of Bricks: Amsterdam, Delft & Manhattan

Macabre Mania From Charles Allan Gilbert to Andy Warhol

March 8, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 2 Comments

The ossuary under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini at Via Veneto in Rome houses the skulls and bones of some 4,000 former Capuchin monks who were interred there between 1631 and 1870. The dead were buried without coffin and later exhumed to make room for newly deceased. Their remains were transformed into “decorative designs.”

In the summer of 1867 Mark Twain visited the Capuchin Convent and recorded his observations of the crypt’s “picturesque horrors” in The Innocents Abroad. What the novelist witnessed were arches built of thigh bones; pyramids constructed of “grinning” skulls; and other structures made of shin and arm bones. Walls were decorated with frescoes showing vines produced of knotted vertebrae; tendrils made of sinews and tendons; and flowers formed of knee-caps and toe-nails. [Read more…] about Macabre Mania From Charles Allan Gilbert to Andy Warhol

Painter Hubert Vos’s ‘Exotic People’: Maastricht to Manhattan and Beyond

February 23, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

In spring 1905, painter Hubert Vos received a letter at his Manhattan residence from the Dutch Legation in Peking inquiring if he would be able and willing to travel to China and paint the portrait of a prominent official. The invitation was vague, but too tempting to refuse for a painter who had made the portraiture of racial types his specialty. [Read more…] about Painter Hubert Vos’s ‘Exotic People’: Maastricht to Manhattan and Beyond