Jerome Myers: Raising Hope in the New World

Raising Hope

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in the

New World

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Raising Hope

in the

F E B R UA RY

J U L E

C O LLINS

SM IT H

AUBURN

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1 – M AY

New World

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M USEUM

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OF

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ART

UNIVERSITY

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Portrait of Jerome Myers, c. 1907, courtesy of Barry Downes.

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AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S

It is a pleasure to present this exhibition of a select group of paintings and works on paper by the artist Jerome Myers. Myers’ career should be considered within the context of those artists such as Robert Henri, John Sloan, and George Luks, who assertively depicted the familiar and everyday reality of their surroundings disdaining more traditional studio themes. Though their work was often met with harsh criticism, these urban realists aspired to discover a truly American character by painting what they knew, saw, and experienced every day. Their work was inspired as much by the urgings of Ralph Waldo Emerson to establish an American distinctiveness as it was by the personality of teacher Robert Henri, who wrote in The Art Spirit, “An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.”

Certainly this is the case when we consider the work of such a skillful draughtsman as Jerome Myers.

The idea for an exhibition of Myers’ work originated many years ago with Helen Farr Sloan, widow of the artist John Sloan. Both were Myers’ good friends.

We thank her, posthumously, as well as her attorney, Jerome K. Grossman, for facilitating our role to be the institution to finally realize this project. We are also indebted to Katherine Degn and Carole Pesner of the Kraushaar Galleries for their encouragement and generosity to JCSM, as well as the artist’s grandson, Barry Downes, for his willingness to share important information and archive materials with us, and to Irene Golden Dash whose father published the artist’s memoir, Artist in Manhattan.

We appreciate the collegiality of our colleagues, Tom Butler at the Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA; Heather Campbell Coyle at the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; Bill Eiland at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens; and Todd

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Herman at the Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, who so generously agreed to lend to this exhibition. We are also grateful to Samuel Rosenfeld for agreeing to provide artwork from his personal collection.

Such an exhibition is the result of many hearts and hands that assisted with everything from educational programming, loans and shipping, catalogue and exhibition design, and installation. I am always thankful for our entire museum staff who work diligently to meet our many challenges, but I especially want to acknowledge curator Dennis Harper; museum designer, Janet Guynn; preparator, Ty Smith; and registrar, Danielle Funderburk for their good work.

Finally, as the child of immigrants, who was born on New York’s Lower East Side after WWII, there is something in Myers’ work that resonates with me even though it was a very different place by the time my parents arrived there. There is no doubt that the urban reality of life in the tenements of New York City in the early 20th century was harsh and unforgiving.

But unlike the art of most of his contemporaries, that bleakness is not the central focus of Myers’ artwork.

Instead, his depiction of families in the markets, on the stoops, or participating at religious festivals suggests his personal convictions about these recent immigrants who had come to America to find for themselves and their children a small piece of the American Dream.

Immigration continues to this day to be a controversial subject in America, touching on a myriad of questions that include economics and a variety of social issues.

Jerome Myers’ great empathy for his immigrant subjects stands in direct contrast to what was the prevalent thought of his time. In his work he tried to express and capture the hopefulness that he knew had brought these people to make a life in the New World.

Marilyn Laufer, Director

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Jerome Myers:

Raising Hope

in the

m a r i l y n

New World

l a u f e r

3

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10. Virginia Myers, 1911–12

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“You may have heard these places referred to as “slums” but you are likely to carry away a different impression—one of a happy industrious people, leading simple lives…” 1

"The Bend," Jacob Riis, reproduced in How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (New York: Scribner, 1901), 48. 2

T h i s q u o t e , w r i tt e n b y a n u n k n ow n j o u r n a l i s t for an article about the artist Jerome Myers, suggests a very different attitude toward the ever-growing immigrant populations that dominated New York City in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Most statistics of the time suggested that the Asian, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants who arrived in America were unskilled laborers, living in dire poverty with no immediate prospects for employment, and most artists specializing in urban street scenes since the mid-19th century portrayed the immigrants and their children as either conniving street fighters that relied upon their cunning resourcefulness to survive or as unwitting and disheveled victims entrapped by their impoverished circumstances. Though actual truth might lie somewhere between, Jerome Myers’ images of the Lower East Side are a dichotomy to the prevalent sentiments of the times which were more in keeping with the staged photographs of social reformer Jacob Riis, as published in his book How the Other Half Lives. Riis’ depictions were undoubtedly intended to better the circumstances of the people crowded into the unhealthy and airless tenements he visited, but he also saddled his compassionate work with preconceived cultural biases that only reconfirmed the stereotypes and prejudices of much of his audiences.

For a career spanning over fifty years, Myers made his art eschewing much of the strong political content of the Progressivism movement of this time, which is somewhat of an irony given that his younger brother Gustavus made his reputation as a journalist, historian, and writer in this muckraking era of American literature.3

1.

New York Times, “Life on the East Side, His Art Inspiration,” July 1, 1906.

2.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1923, and its copyright has expired.

3.

Gustavus Myers (1872–1942) authored books on a variety of subjects including Tammany Hall and the history of the Supreme Court. Today he is remembered as the namesake of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights at Simmons College. According to Jerome Myers’ grandson, Barry Downes, the brothers were not close.

5

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Instead, the artist chose to depict and document his adopted city of New York, describing the light as it changed from gas to electric street lamps. He consciously sought to record the buildings and storefronts of a bygone era before they were lost, for as he noted to a journalist writing in 1940, “That’s what I love: those old buildings. They had warmth and personality.”4 Myers also sought to capture the essence of the people that lived in those neighborhoods and buildings. So many of them had only recently arrived to make their home here, but to Myers they conveyed a profound sense of hope and determination as they struggled to make their dream of a better life a reality. Walking among them at all hours of the day and night, he never really sought to depict the dramatic moments of their lives but instead focused on the ordinary day-to-day existence he observed. He depicted the streets as gathering places, crowded with push carts, accommodating religious festivals, serving as settings for public forums and private reverie. Most often Myers’ images suggest familial relationships at the heart of this immigrant experience; something the artist did not have much of in his own childhood, as was sometimes the case among the poor of his generation.

7. Girls with Candles, ca. 1920

In so much of Myers’ artwork we see the children of these immigrants, playing in the streets and in parks under the watchful eye of mothers, grandmothers and older siblings who sit on stoops or park benches. The presence of these children in some ways sets Myers’ work apart from that of his colleagues who were more likely to depict the hustle and bustle of street life with descriptive images of a cast of characters selling their wares, drinking in bars, or enjoying a stage production. In Myers’ work we find similar subjects, but almost always present are the children of the Lower East Side, their well-behaved demeanor and neat dress reflecting perhaps an old world style of parenting that was a little more strict and demanding. These children were part of the reason that families left their native country. The better life their parents sought was not so much for themselves but most importantly for the

4.

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Meyer Berger, “About New York,” New York Times, March 20, 1940.

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23. Angels of the Fiesta, 1920

7

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opportunities that America held for their sons and daughters. In his drawings, prints, and paintings, Myers’ portrayal of these youngsters as an integral part of the fabric of the life and energy of the Lower East Side is part of his fundamental theme of the imminent hope and bright prospects he found in these people.

In his 1940 memoir, Artist in Manhattan, Myers mused about his resemblance to Rembrandt and the fact that he himself was also of Dutch ancestry. But more important is the artist’s admission that the Old Master served as his inspiration both stylistically and in his subject matter. Like Rembrandt, Myers produced numerous self-portraits in oil during his long career, as well as creating masterful sketches and prints. Most often these were straightforward assessments of himself as he matured, exemplifying his ability to create thoughtful studies of character and mood. But Myers also produced playful images of himself where he paid direct homage to Rembrandt donning a feathered tam or turban and gold chains. Though these self-portraits were a constant throughout his career, it was his desire to capture the immigrants and the environment of New York’s Lower East Side ghettos that became his life’s work. For Myers the fragments of life that he discovered in his wanderings through the East Side was in a way a corollary of the Dutch ghetto of Rembrandt’s world.5

4. Self Portrait, 1917

Jerome Myers was born in Petersburg, Virginia in 1867, one of five children. In his early years the family relocated first to Trenton, New Jersey and later to Philadelphia. His father would leave the family to their own devices as he set out for adventure in the gold fields of the west, only to return again after long interludes, during which time his wife provided for their four sons and daughter. When their Philadelphia home caught fire, Myers’ mother was hospitalized and the children were sent to foster care and orphanages.

Jerome was ten years old at this time. His mother’s injuries made her an invalid for the rest of her life and Myers went to work at the age of eleven to help support the family. By the time he turned nineteen the family had relocated again, first to Baltimore and finally to New York in 1886 where he began painting signs and advertisements as well as stage sets for his brother’s various business ventures. But it was also at this time that Myers began to study art in earnest,

5.

Jerome Myers, Artist In Manhattan (New York: American Artist Group, Inc., 1940), 74–76.

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taking night classes first at Cooper Union and later at the Art Students League, even saving enough from his work in the art department of the Tribune for a brief trip to Paris in 1896. It soon became clear to him that the traditional academic approach of his teachers, who included George de Forest Brush and Kenyon Cox, was a deterrent to his personal artistic expression which was “…to interpret life for myself, to render the impression of the city and the people I cared for.”6 Myers always carried with him a sketch pad as he walked the streets or rode the El through New York, drawing the various individuals and groups that caught his eye, from his place hidden in a doorway or on a back seat in order to not intrude upon the scene. The artwork that resulted from these city jaunts were among the first urban realist paintings to be done. But with Myers these depictions were never the straight document of the dispassionate observer but quite the opposite; his drawings were his attempt to infuse the ordinary and everyday world of urban life with a humble poetry—a romantic view to be sure.

2. Newsboys, 1907

By 1900, at the age of thirty-three, Myers was represented by the Macbeth Gallery.

He was included in various exhibitions in the city including the National Academy of Design. At the Universal Exposition in St. Louis, he won the Bronze Medal. In January 1908, the Macbeth Gallery invited the artist to have an important one-person show featuring twenty-five paintings and a group of drawings which garnered good reviews.

By all accounts, reflected in the critical writing of the time, Myers had become a respected member of the New York art scene. He had married the artist, Ethel Klinck in 1905 and had become the devoted and loving father of the irrepressible Virginia, a child dance prodigy.7

6.

Ibid., 18.

7.

Myers met Ethel Klinck while she served as the assistant director of the Chase School of Art. An artist in her own right whose work was included in the Armory Show, she supplemented the family income with designing and fabricating high-end ladies clothing. Their daughter Virginia, a natural talent, was dancing before audiences at the early age of 4, receiving rave reviews in Vogue, New York Globe, and Vanity Fair.

9

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11. Mother and Child Resting #1, n.d.

The art scene of the first decade of the 20th century was, as Myers wrote, “…a landscape before an impending storm.”8 Although their styles greatly differed, there was a growing dissatisfaction among many artists with the limitations of both the exhibition space and the jury process at the National Academy of Design. After much discussion, the artist and teacher Robert Henri had finally broken with the National Academy of Design when it failed to elect as members (among others) Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, and Jerome Myers in April 1907.9 Seizing this break as an opportunity to hold challenging independent exhibitions, Henri asked Arthur B. Davies to arrange to hire the Macbeth Gallery for an exhibition in February 1908.

8.

Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 32.

9.

William Inness Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle (New York: Hacker Books, 1988), 128.

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That exhibition of “The Eight” consisted of five paintings each by Henri, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan, all urban realists who had been Henri’s students in Philadelphia; Post-Impressionists Ernest Lawson and Maurice Prendergast; and the Symbolist, Arthur B. Davies. Much has been written about Myers purposely being omitted from this group show but given that the gallery had just held a successful one-person exhibition of Myers work that had filled the Macbeth Gallery the month prior it would have perhaps been redundant to include his work in this group project as well.

Two years later (April 1910) Myers fully participated in the non-juried exhibition of Independent Artists organized by Henri and Sloan, which featured sixty-three pieces by twenty-seven artists. His involvement in this project and others (such as an exhibition of the Pastelist’s Society in 1911) led to his taking an important leadership role in the establishment of a group that became known as the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. Most of the effort of this group was focused on planning a large exhibition that would offer the public an opportunity to see the “… full scope of American contemporary artistic achievement.”10 The group’s directive would expand, however, when Arthur B. Davies became its president. His vision of this exhibition was not only to introduce a wider audience to contemporary American artists but also to present the work of contemporary European modernists. Myers, writing years later about what became known as the Armory Show, noted that, “Our first idea of an all-American show had broadened far beyond the horizon.”11 Later adding, “Davies had unlocked the door to foreign art and thrown the key away.”12 Though Myers was represented by seventeen pieces in this highly significant exhibition, he was undoubtedly disappointed that the American artists in the exhibition took a back seat to the incomparable artwork of Europeans such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Marcel Duchamp and the notoriety that surrounded them.

Unlike many of the American artists who participated in the Armory Show and took inspiration from the new ideas of fauvism and cubism, Myers could not embrace any aspects of this new direction in art, seeing it only as “…a new form of academical sterility…”13 Instead he would continue to record the habitations of the crowded East Side supported by friends like Guy Pène du Bois who noted, “…when I say Jerome Myers is a realist, I do not mean a realist in the commonly accepted or in the aborted sense. His work suggests both matter and spirit to me.… It has force, a force which may hide behind many subtleties, and spread itself over many shades of thought and meaning…”14

10.

Milton W. Brown, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression (1955; repr., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p.47.

11.

Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 35.

12.

Ibid., 36.

13.

Ibid., 42.

14.

Ibid., 44.

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At the encouragement of the artist, writer, and curator Roger Fry, Myers traveled with his family to London and Paris in 1914. The timing of this trip could not have been worse with the pending outbreak of WWI. Myers struggled to get his family safely back to New York, confirming for him that the city was the only inspiration he needed for the rest of his career. He wrote and illustrated several articles about this experience for a publication of the Edison Electric Company called Edison Monthly. His skill as a writer also resulted in a series of anonymous essays about the art world for the magazine Arts and Decoration edited by Pène du Bois and lastly his memoir published in 1940, shortly before his death.

In the years that followed WWI, Myers found an appreciative audience for his work that resulted in acquisitions by museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and private collectors including John Quinn and Duncan Phillips. In 1929 he was elected an associate of the National Academy and in 1936 was awarded the prestigious Carnegie Prize.

Myers died on June 29, 1940 after falling in his studio. In his obituary, this poet of the streets of Manhattan was remembered as the artist who saw and captured the beauty of the humble lives of the people he encountered on the streets of the Lower East Side.15

15.

The Art Digest, “Jerome Myers Passes,” July 1, 1940.

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24. The Old Quarter, n.d.

13

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Jerome Myers’

Studio

of the street

d e n n i s

h a r p e r

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3. Hubers Museum, 1907

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“Pomp and ostentation would be cheap before the natural dignity of the life I saw.”

D i s c u s s i o n o f J e r o m e M y e r s ’ a rt m o s t o f t e n c e n t e r s o n h i s sympathetic treatment of his subjects, the street-level views of lower-class New York and the families that inhabited those crowded, immigrant neighborhoods; and rightly so, for Myers’ humanist focus occupied his art production steadfastly for half a century. Myers himself acknowledged that being “honest” to his subjects was of greater concern that any artful manner in which they were rendered. “When I left behind me the mere vanities of art to make myself a humble observer, I knew that my subject matter was too great for any academical treatment. Pomp and ostentation would be cheap before the natural dignity of the life I saw.”1 Nonetheless, his canvases exhibit a sensitive touch with color that ranges from an Ashcan School “black” palette to the warm, close tonalities seen in the Nabis panels of Edouard Vuillard or Pierre Bonnard, and frequently Myers achieves lighter and more impressionistic effects through careful juxtaposition of subtle and intense hues. Although he downplayed the artist’s craft and rebelled against the slavish devotion to it in contemporary academies, Myers knew well what he needed to do to create a successful picture and wielded the tools with great aplomb.

Indeed, the truthful nature of Myers’ record of the Lower East Side relies equally on his skill as a draughtsman as having an empathetic eye. This is most evident in the quick pencil studies he made almost daily, exploring the streets with his nine-byeleven-inch sketchbook in hand.2 Like Rembrandt, with whom Myers identified, he captures a gesture and even an entire scene through fluid, expressive, and economical strokes. His figures are not posed. Instead, Myers renders them swiftly, sometimes furtively, before they move on or come to notice him. As Gustav Stickley remarked in a 1915 profile of the artist, “his sketches…are fragments of life—you feel some one coming into the picture at one side; and at the other, some one moving out. The children who are playing may be on the next block in an instant. It is all his impression of life from moment to moment, and he never makes the fatal mistake of seeking to arrest an impression and make it stationary and force it into formal outline.”3 His animated mark making, just enough to tell the story, reinforces the impression of a candid observation.

1.

Jerome Myers, Artist in Manhattan, (New York: American Artists Group, Inc., 1940), 82.

2.

Bruce St. John, Jerome Myers, An Artist in Manhattan, 1867–1967 (Wilmington, DE: The Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, 1967), 9. Published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at Delaware Art Center and Montclair Art Museum.

3.

Gustave Stickley, ed., “Jerome Myers, Etcher and a Student of Human Nature,” The Craftsman, vol. 29, no. 1 (October 1915), 31.

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Myers’ earliest work in New York consisted of drawings and pastels. He turned to oil painting at the suggestion of his first gallerist there, William Macbeth.4 Myers also began making prints in the early 1900s, like his friend and fellow artist John Sloan, detailing the lives of the tenement dwellers he witnessed first-hand. These drypoint engravings and etchings maintained the fresh quality of his drawings and offered Myers a unique opportunity for experimentation. Although he took art classes at Cooper Union and the Art Students League, Myers was likely selftaught in printmaking like Sloan, who learned the process by reading Philip Hamerton’s The Etcher’s Handbook.5 In prints, Myers perhaps found his ideal medium. The etched line is even more responsive to the artist’s slightest touch than one made by a lead pencil or paintbrush, recording every minute twitch and flutter as the stylus is drawn across a prepared etching plate.

13. Little Family, n.d.

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In the simplest method of etching the artist covers a metal plate with an acid-resistant coating, upon which a drawing is made with needle or stylus exposing the metal through the drawn lines. The surface is then flooded with acid, which “bites” incisions into the metal sheet corresponding to the drawn marks. When the etched plate is ready to be printed, the resistant coating is removed and a thick-bodied printer’s ink is rubbed across the plate and forced into all the etched recesses. The metal surface is then buffed clean (more or less), allowing ink to remain in the grooves. The plate is then covered with a sheet of artist’s paper and rolled through a ringer-like press. Strong pressure from this device causes the sticky ink to transfer from etched plate to paper, which when removed from atop the plate bears the imprint of the artist’s drawing in reverse. This inking and printing process can be repeated to produce multiple impressions of the image. Among Myers’ prints in the present exhibition, Little Family best reflects this basic technique, known as “hard-ground” etching (describing the firmness of the acid-resistant coating). In this image a fine, needlepoint line delineates the seated mother and children who gather in an enclosed park. The hard-edged marks seem to skate over the print’s surface. While curving contours describe the figures’ forms, Myers’ left-to-right hatch work evokes a blustery wind that races across the open outdoor space.

4.

Bennard B. Perlman, “John Sloan and Jerome Myers: Pioneers of the Ashcan School,” in Ashcan Humanists, John Sloan & Jerome Myers, ed. Ken Ratner, Bennard B, Perlman, and Darlene MillerLanning (Scranton, PA: The University of Scranton, 2009), 11. Published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at The Hope Horn Gallery, The University of Scranton.

5.

David W. Scott and E. John Bullard, John Sloan, 1871–1951 (Boston: Boston Book and Art, and Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1971), 48. Published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at National Gallery of Art and five other venues.

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Little Family illustrates a standard approach to etching in Myers’ time, but his more prevalent practice was not so conventional. Most of the etchings here are printed in multiple colors, creating an effect that resembles watercolor washes over a black linear sketch. Without having today the benefit of a personal description by Myers outlining his techniques, one can only make observations on his studio procedures based on examination of the prints—which, in fact, reveals a lot about his inventive process. In his color etchings, Myers takes creative liberty with the accepted idea that every print in a numbered edition should appear exactly the same as all others, or as close as humanly possible. Instead, he inserts a degree of spontaneity and improvisation into the model. For the way that he adds color to his etchings is the way a painter intuitively works, rather than as a traditional lithographer, engraver, or etcher trained in the process would produce color prints. To tone these etchings Myers applied dilute color washes on the etched metal plates, which are then printed in a relief process, or more accurately as a plano-monotype. Each print, therefore, varies from one to the next, as the thin, colored inks are laid down freehand with slightly amorphous boundaries. Myers allows his brushstrokes to remain apparent, adjacent colors to bleed into one another, and he modulates the saturation of the transparent hues; all of which can only be replicated approximately from print to print. Often, he would modify the plate slightly after printing a few copies or re-color the image differently.6 We can discern from the embossed plate marks at the margins of the images that Myers made one pass through the press with a plate inked in black, as described earlier, and a separate press run using the same plate with colored inks brushed on. This is particularly evident on the prints where the plate is slightly misaligned between press runs, such as Old Cronies and Studio Gate, E. 38th St., NYC. Old Cronies even shows a ghost image doubling of lines through mis-registration of the plate, easily observable around the stool legs, where residual black ink remained in the grooves from

6.

20. Market Woman, n.d.

21. Market Woman, n.d.

St. John, Jerome Myers, An Artist in Manhattan, 9.

19

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19. Old Cronies, n.d.

the previous pull. In most cases, Myers seems to have printed the color plate first, followed by an inking of black, because the black plate mark appears on top of the first embossing. But not always, as Studio Gate appears to be printed in reverse order, color washes over black, and one result is the gentle softening of the black linear marks as color inks overlay and diffuse them.

Myers must have preferred this softer linear effect, which resembles more closely his notebook sketches, as opposed to the sharper line character of a typical hard-ground etching. To those ends, we see his skillful use of another, more subtle technique in several of the prints assembled here, such as First Ave. Park, Group of Children, and Virginia Modelling. These are likely examples of Myers working on a “softground” etching plate. The basic process is the same as for hard-grounds; i.e., metal is exposed and etched through an acid-resistant coating. In this case, however, the resistant ground has a soft, waxy consistency. Instead of scratching a relatively hard coating directly with a sharp needle, the artist places a sheet of drawing paper over the soft-ground and proceeds to draw. The pressure of a pencil or other drawing tool causes the soft-ground coating to adhere to the back of the paper, exposing the metal plate at every mark. Yet, these lines differ significantly from the pen-like strokes of a hard-ground etching. They reflect not only the grainy texture of the drawing paper, but also the varying pressure of the artist’s touch. The result is an etched line that modulates between dark and light strokes as well as thin and thicker lines. Combined with Myers’ color inking technique, the pencil-like marks give his

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prints the appearance of a sheet pulled from his sketchbook. A viewer foremost notices Myers’ attention to the subject; his craft, though adroitly exercised, eases into the background.

Stickley judged Myers’ prints “a departure in etching,” with their “greater interest in the subject than in the medium.”7 It is a valid assessment and in no way should be considered demeaning.

Myers’ approach in all his art, from the drawings and graphic work to paintings and pastels, was to honor the subject and subjugate the craft. Yet, as one soon recognizes after spending time with Myers’ deceptively simple art, his technical skills and comfort with the medium are self-evident.

He chooses humbly to avoid the pomp and ostentation, to observe and record his subjects, as Marilyn Laufer describes, “hidden…in order to not intrude upon the scene.” Discussing his life’s work in his final year, Myers noted, “It is better to abstain, in order really to attain. This was the aim of Flaubert, in another medium, in expressing the life of his day, as it was also the aim of our own Walt Whitman.”8 Like them, Myers strove to find “le mot juste,” the right word—or essential drawn line—to render his intent. Never fussy or overembellished, Myers’ etchings best demonstrate his lifelong instinct to capture a moment and share an emotion. His reductive images’ brisk rendering reminds that those experiences are ephemeral. Unlike the staid, imitative constructs of Life composed in the academy, Myers’ work is an attempt to reveal truth in Nature beneath the obvious surface. Firmly in control of a personal art that melded studio experimentation and acute observations of the city and people that shaped a new century, Myers deserves recognition as one of this country’s important artists.

7.

Stickley, “Jerome Myers, Etcher and a Student of Human Nature,” 32.

8.

Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 82.

12. Virginia Modelling, n.d.

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Additional Plates

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1. Washington Square Looking South, 1895

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5. Child Dancing (Back of Dancing Girl), 1917

25

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6. Italian Fiesta, ca. 1920

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8. Carousel, ca. 1924

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9. Street Group, 1925

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14. First Ave. Park, n.d.

29

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15. Group of Children, n.d.

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16. The Young Mother, n.d.

31

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17. On 9th Avenue, n.d.

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18. Studio Gate, E. 38 St., NYC, n.d.

33

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22. Street Carousel, 1906

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25. Under the El, n.d.

35

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1.

Washington Square Looking South, 1895 Pastel, pencil, and gouache on paper 9 1/8 x 7 3/4 inches Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection; purchased with a gift from the Roy and Christine Sturgis Charitable and Educational Trust, Barry B. Findley and Katie Speer, Trustees.

1997.034.002 2.

Newsboys, 1907 Crayon on paper 5 9/16 x 7 9/16 inches Delaware Art Museum, gift of Helen Farr Sloan. 1989.5 3.

Hubers Museum, 1907 Black chalk or pencil on paper 7 1/2 x 10 inches (sight) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.14 4.

Self-Portrait, 1917 Charcoal and white chalk on blue-gray paper 13 x 10 inches Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA; Museum purchase made possible by the Ella E. Kirven Charitable Lead Trust for Acquisitions. 2003.1.39

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5.

Child Dancing (Back of Dancing Girl), 1917 Black chalk or pencil on paper 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches (sight) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.13 6.

Italian Fiesta, ca. 1920 Ink, pencil, and watercolor on paper 6 7/8 x 9 3/4 inches Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection; purchase, Memorial Acquisition Fund. 1981.003 7.

Girls with Candles, ca. 1920 Ink over graphite on paper, with brown and metallic gold marks 5 7/8 x 4 1/4 inches (sight) Private collection 8.

Carousel, ca. 1924 Pastel on paper 16 x 19 7/8 inches Delaware Art Museum, gift of Helen Farr Sloan. 1989.1 9.

Street Group, 1925 Watercolor on paper 10 3/4 x 15 inches (sight) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.12

10.

Virginia Myers, 1911–12 Colored etching on paper 8 1/8 x 5 1/8 inches (image) Delaware Art Museum, gift of Mrs. Esther Arthur. 1992.63 11.

Mother and Child Resting #1, n.d.

Etching on paper 3 3/8 x 9 15/16 inches (image) Delaware Art Museum, gift of Helen Farr Sloan. 1978.285 12.

Virginia Modelling, n.d.

Etching with color relief Edition: 28/50 Inscribed in lower margin: Printed in color by the Artist 7 7/8 x 5 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.09 13.

Little Family, n.d.

Etching on paper 4 1/8 x 4 13/16 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.01

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EXHIBITION CHECKLIST Jerome Myers: Raising Hope in the New World F E B R U A RY 1 – M AY 4 , 2 0 1 4

14.

First Ave. Park, n.d.

Etching with color relief Edition: 2/50 6 1/8 x 7 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.06

18.

Studio Gate, E. 38 St., NYC, n.d.

Etching with color relief Edition: 14/50 9 1/8 x 4 7/8 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.05

22.

Street Carousel, 1906 Oil on canvas 27 3/4 x 22 5/8 inches Georgia Museum of Art, The University of Georgia; Eva Underhill Holbrook Memorial Collection of American Art; gift of Alfred H. Holbrook. 1947.151

15.

Group of Children, n.d.

Etching with color relief 6 x 7 1/4 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.07

19.

Old Cronies, n.d.

Etching with color relief Edition: 10/100 4 3/4 x 6 5/8 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.02

23.

Angels of the Fiesta, 1920 Oil on canvas 30 x 25 inches Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.11

16.

The Young Mother, n.d.

Etching with color relief Inscribed: To Harry Shapiro.

7 3/4 x 5 13/16 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.10 17.

On 9th Avenue, n.d.

Etching with color relief Edition: 4/50 6 3/4 x 8 7/8 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.08

20.

Market Woman, n.d.

Etching with color relief (yellow, green, and blue) Edition: 47/50 7 3/4 x 2 11/16 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.03 21.

Market Woman, n.d.

Etching with color relief (yellow, red, green, and brown) Edition: 23/50 (?)

7 3/4 x 2 11/16 inches (image) Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.04

24.

The Old Quarter, n.d.

Oil on canvas 25 1/2 x 30 inches Samuel Rosenfeld Art Collection, New York City 25.

Under the El, n.d.

Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches Samuel Rosenfeld Art Collection, New York City

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COVER IMAGE DETAIL 9. Street Group, 1925 Watercolor on paper 10 3/4 x 15 inche Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Kraushaar Galleries, New York. 2012.14.12

DESIGN BY Janet Guynn ISBN 0-9742130-6-3 © 2014 Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University Auburn University is an equal opportunity educational institution/employer.

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