American Paintings and SculptureAuthor(s): John K. Howat, Natalie Spassky and Kathryn GreenthalSource: Notable Acquisitions (Metropolitan Museum of Art), No. 1980/1981 (1980 - 1981), pp.55-56Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513574 .

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AMERICAN PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE

SARAH FAIRCHILD American. Active 1840s

Union Park, New York. c. 1845 Pen and ink, pencil, and watercolor on paper, 137/ x 177 in. (35.2 x 45.4 cm.). Bequest of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1979. 1980.341.3

This representation of Union Park by Sarah Fairchild, dating from about 1845, is one of twenty-three examples of American folk art acquired by the Museum in 1980 from the estates of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch. Union Square, located between Broadway and Fourth Avenue and extending from Fourteenth Street to Seventeenth Street, was formerly known as Union Place and Union Park. The iron fence enclosing the park, shown in this view, was installed in 1836. The fountain, constructed in 1842, was first put into operation in the same year on the day celebrating the completion of the Croton Aqueduct, which for the first time provided New York with an adequate water supply. Before the fountain was put in service, the diarist George T. Strong, a tireless observer of the New York scene, reported that it appeared as a "circular basin with a squirt in the middle, and nothing more." He subsequently pronounced it splendid. Catherine Havens, another diarist of a younger generation, noted in her diary for 1849: "I roll my hoop and jump the rope in the afternoon ... sometimes in Union Square. Union Square has a high railing around it, and a fountain in the middle. My brother says he remembers when it was a pond and the farmers used to water their horses in it." By 1849 Union Square was surrounded by luxurious private mansions and described by E. Porter Belden as "the most fashionable portion of the city."

This early autumn view to the east across the park shows the row of buildings along Fourth Avenue (subsequently the site of S. Klein's department store) and, at the far right, to the south, the public reservoir on Thirteenth Street. The painstaking detail, the incongruities of perspective and spatial relationships, and the absorbing interest in surface design betray the hand of an artist with little formal training but a fine sensibility for descriptive

detail, color, and design. Both for its documentary value as a nineteenth-century representation of an important New York site and as a disarming rendition of a city scene, the work is a welcome addition to the Museum's collection of New York views and American folk art. REFS.: Belden, E. Porter. New- York: Past, Present, and Future. New York, 1849; Stokes, I. N. Phelps. The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498- 1909. 6 vols., New York, 1915-28; Havens, Catherine E. Diary of a Little Girl in Old New York. 2nd ed., New York, 1920; The Diary of George Templeton Strong. Ed. by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas. 4 vols., New York, 1952.

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ENOCH WOOD PERRY, JR. American. 1831-1915

Talking It Over. 1872 Oil on canvas, 221/4 x 291/4 in. (56.5 x 74.3 cm.). Gift of Erving and Joyce Wolf. 1980.361

Enoch Wood Perry spent most of his prolific professional career in New York City, where he won a reputation as one of America's leading genre painters. Perry was born in Boston and, as an enterprising youth, saved enough money to go to Europe to study figure painting in Diisseldorf under Emanuel Leutze and in Paris under Thomas Couture. Between 1856 and 1865, when he settled in New York, Perry led a somewhat wandering existence, serving first as United States consul in Venice before working as a portrait painter in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Honolulu (where he pro- duced several portraits of King Kamehameha IV), and Salt Lake City (where he painted Brigham Young). Finally settled in New York, Perry produced a stream of homespun genre scenes, done in both oil and watercolor, which dealt with amiable, familiar domestic and farmyard subjects that must have tugged at the memories and heartstrings of his city-bound patrons. The typical flavor of his pictures can be deduced from some of their titles: "Girl Spinning," "The Farmer's Daughter," "Thanksgiving Time," "Shelling Peas," "Grandfather's Slippers." These accu- rately drawn and colored pictures, presenting the most common- place rural and domestic activities of American life, were usually charming and at times sentimental. Occasionally Perry's pictures

Entries by John K. Howat, Curator; Natalie Spassky, Associate Curator; Kathryn Greenthal, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow

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take on a tranquillity and monumentality and impress the viewer with their quiet strength. Such a painting is Talking It Over, which presents an almost theatrical montage in a barn, including a pipe- smoking farmer in a chair to the right and an elderly man seated on an upended sawbuck, counterbalancing him on the left. Sur- rounded by scraps of straw, cornstalks and husks, pumpkins, a large hogshead holding pitchforks and rakes (and displaying the shadow of a horse's head), and a horse in the stall behind, the men seem frozen in a New England silence perhaps in whimsical reference to the title. Perry's treatment is characteristically friendly to the subjects, endowing them with great dignity as they occupy the center of their world.

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HARRY FENN American. 1845-1911

Caesarea Philippi (Banias). 1878 Pen and ink, wash, and watercolor on paper, 123/4 x 21 /2 in. (57.8 x 80 cm.). Maria DeWitt Jesup and Morris K. Jesup Funds. 1980.298

Harry Fenn, a native of England, emigrated to the United States at the age of nineteen and subsequently became one of America's most distinguished and prolific illustrators. He provided countless finely drawn landscapes for a variety of lavish gift books that were published during the 1870s and 1880s, the most famous of which was Picturesque America, edited by William Cullen Bryant. Fenn was the primary illustrator for an extremely handsome four- volume book by Sir Charles Wilson, Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt, published in London and New York between 1880 and 1884. An engraving of our drawing Caesarea Philippi. which bears the date May 22, 1878, appeared in the second volume. Caesarea Philippi, an ancient town located at the headwaters of the Jordan River and known as Banias (or Paneas) in modern times, is famous as the site of the Calling of Saint Peter and the Transfiguration of Christ, both events described in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, as noted by Fenn on the drawing. It is there Christ said of Peter: "upon this rock I will build my church." The drawing, with its attractive freedom in the handling of india ink and washes, is a typical and fine example of this little-known artist's work.

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS American. 1848-1907

Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith). 1884 Bronze, diam. 141/4 in. (36.2 cm.). Inscribed: BESSIE- WHITE/ FEBRVARY/VII/M- D C- C- C L- XXX -IV/FROM A. STG. Foundry mark on the rim: Cast by Lorme & Aubry./ N.Y. 1893. Gift of Anne Tonetti Gugler. 1981.55.1

Gifted, sensitive, and influential, Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the foremost American sculptor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A devoted friend, he delighted in demonstrat- ing his feelings of affection and admiration by creating superbly modeled relief portraits of colleagues and intimates, and members of their families. This handsome bronze medallion of Bessie White is a variant of the rectangular marble relief (1976.388) Saint- Gaudens made as a wedding gift for his close friend and collabo- rator, the architect Stanford White. Here, as in the marble version, Bessie's charming gesture of gently pushing the bridal veil away from her face serves both as a compositional means of displaying the features and as a symbol of her unfolding to the full promise of life.

It was not atypical for Saint-Gaudens to vary the form, medium, inscription, and dimensions of his sculpture. Such modifications were the results of the constant experimentation and alteration of details that characterized his creative process. Bearing the foundry mark of Lorme & Aubry, the bronze medallion is thought to be unique; no other bronze medallion is known. Saint-Gaudens gave the medallion to Mary Lawrence Tonetti, one of his favorite assistants. The relief hung for many years in her studio on Fortieth Street in New York, where Bessie White, a distant cousin, was a frequent visitor. Presented to the Museum by Anne Tonetti Gugler, the daughter of Mary Lawrence Tonetti, the portrait of Mrs. Stanford White is a significant addition to our distinguished Saint- Gaudens collection. When seen together with the marble, it en- riches our understanding of this sculptor's working method and ultimately confirms our conviction that Saint-Gaudens achieved a vitality in relief sculpture unrivaled in America.

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