“Where was this park and what was the view?”William Glackens was an American artist known for his re

“Where was this park and what was the view?”William Glackens was an American artist known for his realistic, occasionally gritty depictions of New York in the early twentieth century, including street scenes and public settings that gave him an opportunity to observe the lives of ordinary New Yorkers. Glackens’s painting East River Park (on view in American Identities) gives us a look back at the location now known as Carl Schurz Park, located along Manhattan’s Upper East Side waterfront and bounded by East End Avenue from East 84th to East 86th Streets. Regular visitors to East River Park were mostly residents of the nearby Yorkville neighborhood, which was heavily populated by recent German immigrants. Loosely painted in Glackens’s spontaneous brushwork, these men, women, and children stroll the promenade, rest on park benches, and enjoy the view across the East River. Ironically, that view is yet another segment of the urban landscape: the smoking factories and industrial waterfront of Astoria, Queens.Glackens also sketched and painted people enjoying leisure time at Brooklyn’s Coney Island, as can be seen in his painting titled The Fruit Stand, Coney Island which is on view in Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008. The Fruit Stand is painted in the same cloudy palette as East River Park, but despite the overcast sky, this crowd (including girls in bathing costumes) is taking full advantage of the seaside. Even a hundred years later, city-dwellers will take what they (we!) can get when it comes to open space, whether it’s a rooftop, a small concrete yard, or a local park — but nothing beats a day at the beach.Posted by Jessica Murphy  -- source link

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