A painter’s blurry, enchanting, elusive New York

Born in St. Louis in 1864 and trained in France, Paul Cornoyer made a name for himself in the late 19th century, painting landscapes and urban scenes in an impressionist style.

“In 1899, with encouragement from William Merritt Chase, he moved to New York City,” states oxfordgallery.com.

Here he opened a studio, became associated with the Ash Can school, and for many years was a beloved art teacher at the Mechanics Institute.

“Celebrated for his lyrical cityscapes and atmospheric landscapes, Paul Cornoyer crafted an indelible impression of fin-de-siècle New York,” explains this fine arts site.

[Above: "Winter Twilight Central Park"; below, "Flatiron Building"]

Well-known in his day, his typically rainy, muted depictions of New York City sold well and earned him fame, particularly “The Plaza After Rain” (below) and “Madison Square in the Afternoon” (top).

He’s not a household name, but his vision of a New York with soft edges and blurred borders still resonates—reflecting a moody city filled with mystery and enchantment.

Bits of light illuminating the East River at night

There’s a moody blue-black sky over the lower end of a smoke-choked East River in this painting, “Night, East River, New York,” by Danish-born Impressionist and New York transplant Johann Berthelsen.

Streaks of flickering light from the Brooklyn side illuminate the tugboat, the bridge, and the belching smokestacks of a long-gone industrial city.

The party at Herald Square, Election Day 1907

There were no big national or citywide contests on November 5, 1907. Teddy Roosevelt had been reelected president in 1904, and mayor George McClellan was safely ensconced in his second term.

So who were these New Yorkers, depicted by John Sloan in “Election Night 1907,” so boisterous and excited?

Sloan, who lived in Greenwich Village, later described the scene he encountered in Herald Square:

“Took a walk in the afternoon and saw boys in droves, foraging for fuel for their election fires this evening. . . . after dinner . . . out again and saw the noisy trumpet blowers, confetti throwers and the “ticklers” in use—a small feather duster on a stick which is pushed in the face of each girl by the men, and in the face of men by the girls. A good humorous crowd, so dense in places that it is impossible to control one’s movement.”

A lovely day in Brooklyn’s Tompkins Park in 1887

William Merritt Chase depicts late 19th century Brooklyn parks in several of his paintings.

He lived with his family on Marcy Avenue at the time, so it’s no surprise that he painted scenes like this one from Tompkins Park in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Tompkins, named after a local abolitionist, was the first park established by the city of Brooklyn and laid out by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted.

Opened in the 1870s, it’s now called Herbert Von King Park, after a Bed-Stuy community leader.

“Tattoo and Haircut” on the Bowery

Tattoo parlors, sketchy barber shops, and shady characters hanging around an all-night Bowery mission are all part of painter Reginald Marsh’s “Tattoo and Haircut,” completed in 1932.

Marsh’s paintings typically feature the city’s marginalized Depression-era outcasts.

“What interested Marsh was not the individuals in a crowd, but the crowd itself … In their density and picturesqueness, they recall the crowds in the movies of Preston Sturges or Frank Capra,” wrote Marilyn Cohen in Reginald Marsh’s New York.

The “absolute stillness” of a view from Brooklyn

The vantage point in a “View From Brooklyn,” painted by George Copeland Ault in 1927, looks like Brooklyn Heights or Red Hook.

Or is it farther up the East River, from Williamsburg or Greenpoint?

“A precisionist and surrealist painter, especially noted for nocturnes, George Ault had the ability to depict lonely, everyday beauty of the world in a moment of absolute stillness,” states the caption to the painting at askart.com.

“He also experimented with more traditional styles of realism, but was relatively untouched by modernist abstraction.  His paintings were based on what he saw around him, many of them architectural subjects, and rendered in a quietly controlled manner.”

A windy, slushy Union Square in 1892

Frederick Childe Hassam’s “Winter in Union Square,” painted from 17th Street near Hassam’s studio, kind of resembles what Union Square looked like on Saturday.

Hassam frequently depicted New York streets in severe weather, like this one of pedestrians battling rain in Union Square.

The “chopped out” city from Greenwich Village

John Sloan depicts a moody Village set apart from the rest of the city in his 1922 painting “The City From Greenwich Village.”

In his notes, he had this to say about the setting, the light, and “chopped out” modern New York:

“Looking south over lower Sixth Avenue from the roof of my Washington Place studio, on a winter evening. The distant lights of the great office buildings downtown are seen in the gathering darkness. The triangular loft building on the right had contained my studio for three years before.

“Although painted from memory it seems thoroughly convincing in its handling of light and space. The spot on which the spectator stands is now an imaginary point since all the buildings as far as the turn of the elevated have been removed, and Sixth Avenue has been extended straight down to the business district.

“The picture makes a record of the beauty of the older city which is giving way to the chopped-out towers of the modern New York. Pencil sketch provided details.”

Descending the subway stairs in 1938

It’s a lonely experience in “Entrance to Subway,” by New York City painter Mark Rothko, part of his “subway series” completed in the late 1930s. These paintings depicted the disconnection of modern urban life.

“In the mid-1930s Mark Rothko began a series of works with subjects derived from the urban experience that became known as the Subway series,” writes the Brooklyn Museum. “These paintings reflect the artist’s sense of isolation, shared by many at the time, that resulted from the harsh social conditions caused by the Great Depression.”

No word on which station Rothko, who had a studio on 53rd Street, painted here. But I love the wooden turnstiles.

The “watery slush” of Washington Square

The park was a favorite subject for Ashcan artist William Glackens, who depicts a late winter scene in “Washington Square, Winter” from 1910.

“Washington Square South was Glackens’s home from 1904 to 1913, and he painted more scenes of the square than any other subject except the beach near Bellport, Long Island,” states the website for the New Britain Museum of American Art, where the painting hangs.

“The Washington Square paintings were done in the winter, when the artist delighted in using paint to describe the thick mud, deep snowdrifts, and watery slush on the sidewalks.

“Once a fashionable address, it was by 1910 a diverse neighborhood, typical of the city of New York, which fascinated Glackens. Among the favored details that appear in his Washington Square series are the boy with the red sled, the green bus or trolley, and the woman in the flowered hat.”