Painting the Town -- Museum of the City of New York

Monumental painted panoramas, comprising individual sections sewn together, were a popular entertainment form for much of the nineteenth century. Produced on the same linen canvas used by theatrical set painters, they were typically unrolled within a stage proscenium, creating movable narratives that mesmerized audiences. In October 1849 Samuel B. Waugh's fifty-scene panorama The Mirror of Italy made its exhibition debut in Philadelphia before embarking on a tour to New York City and Boston. Sometime thereafter, the artist returned to the episodic painting, adding a dozen revised "chapters" to it. Under the name Italia, this expanded tableau (about eight hundred feet long) was shown at bookings around the nation, including a featured appearance in 1859 at New York City's New Hope Chapel just below 8th Street.

A descriptive handbook accompanied Italia, identifying each of its sixty-two segments and attributing the project's genesis to "sketches taken by the artist during a residence of several years in Italy."¹

The Bay and Harbor of New York, the concluding scene of this "grand tour," depicted the homecoming of passengers to New York Harbor. Waugh recorded this vista from a point just above the Battery. The companion notes explain its contents: "On the left lies Castle Garden, and off the Battery, the Chinese Junk, Keying, which visited the United States in 1847. In the distance are Brooklyn, Governors Island, and Fort William; and on the right, an Emigrant Ship, discharging, while the wharf, in the fore-ground, is crowded with the passengers, their property, and friends."

The painting's precise dating has been a matter of some confusion owing to Waugh's inclusion of the Keying, a teak-hulled junk from China (visible offshore, with conspicuous upswept ends), in the same composition as the ship discharging passengers and the line of immigrants filing into, or out of, Castle Garden. As the first vessel from the "Celestial Empire" to visit New York, the Keying met with great fanfare when it moored at the Battery in July 1847.² Its arrival presumably would have been fresh in Waugh's mind when he conceived The Mirror of Italy. The disembarkation vignettes, however, more likely associate the canvas with Waugh's later, enlarged panorama of 1854 -1855. In that case, artistic license probably accounts for his retention of the exotic Keying, which helped to emphasize New York's internationalism. It was only in 1855 that Castle Garden (previously an entertainment center) was converted into a new immigration depot.³ Here, Waugh recognizes the landmark's recent change in function.

The foreground scene emphasizes the volume of human cargo offloading into New York by the mid-nineteenth century. In 1860 there were 105,123 immigrants admitted at Castle Garden, of whom 47,330 were Irish, 37,899 German, and 11,361 English. Unlike their predecessors, who were vulnerable to waterfront fraud and other abuses, "greenhorns" arriving on the piers near Castle Garden now benefited from police surveillance and the assistance of emigrant aid societies. The reforms in the landing experience at New York Harbor also may have been a factor in Waugh's choice of dockside subject.

Through careful costuming, the artist authenticates the mix of nationalities and social classes both disembarking from ships and greeting travelers. The crowd contains a well-dressed element, although it is unclear whether these figures represent fashion-conscious New Yorkers or newcomers dressed in their Sunday best. Even though Eastern Europeans would not emigrate to the city in significant numbers until the later nineteenth century, a few passengers appear in the black garb and wide-brimmed hats traditionally worn by Jewish men. Most voyagers, however, reflect the predominantly Irish composition of immigrants streaming through Castle Garden in the years following the Great Famine. The ethnic prejudice faced by rural Irish entering this country is indicated in the trunk in the lower right labeled "Pat Murfy for Ameriky" and in the almost simian caricatures of the Irish farm boys attired in worn frock coats, peaked hats, and outmoded knee pants.⁴ Cluttered around the trunk are kitchen utensils typical of simple hearth-prepared meals. A shawled woman resting on the trunk as she gazes out at the harbor, with children on her lap and at her side, appears more poignant, the pose perhaps alluding to the Mise Eire figure symbolic of Ireland's bereavement over her exiles.⁵

Waugh, a Pennsylvania native, also painted romantic landscapes and portraits. His primary acclaim, however, rested on his panoramas based on an eight-year stay in Italy but produced largely in a studio he maintained at Bordentown, New Jersey. Waugh was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1845 and termed an "honorary" academician in 1847, just as the Mirror of Italy was nearing completion. His wife and children, most notably his son Frederick Judd Waugh, also pursued careers as painters. Waugh's 1854 - 1855 panorama remained in the family's possession until early in the twentieth century, when Harriet C. Bryant of West 47th Street purchased a number of its segments. She in turn sold The Bay and Harbor of New York segment to Mrs. Robert Littlejohn, who donated it to the Museum.

Notes:

1 Waugh's Great Italia & [McDonnell's Voyage to Rome] & A Hand-Book Descriptive of the New Series of Italian Views. Painted by S. B. Waugh, Esq. in 1853, '54, and '55. From Sketches Taken by the Artist During a Residence of Several Years in Italy (Philadelphia, 1867), booklet in Museum Archives (acc. no. 33.169.3). Handbills explaining Waugh's earlier panorama are in the Harvard Theater Collection, Pusey Library, Harvard University. The Museum's booklet, though published later than the handbills, documents the ongoing tour of Waugh's Italia through the third quarter of the nineteenth century. A list of primary sources to both of Waugh's nineteenth-century Italian panoramas was supplied by Kevin J. Avery, an authority on American panorama paintings and then a research associate in the American Paintings and Sculpture Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a letter of January 24, 1988, Museum Archives.

2 During its stay of several months in New York harbor, the Keying proved a popular tourist attraction, with as many as four thousand people a day paying twenty-five cents to board her, and many more flocking to the viewing deck of Castle Garden to study her strange design and crew. Waugh may have intended to indicate that phenomenon in the distant flow of figures from Castle Garden, which most historians now read as immigrants newly registered at Castle Garden. See Norman Brouwer, "New York's Unusual Chinese Visitor & the Junk Keying," Seaport Magazine 14, no. 2 (Summer 1980): 18 -19.

3 By the late 1840s, Bedloe's Island, the traditional landing station for overseas arrivals, had become strained by the swelling numbers of incoming vessels to New York, prompting the need for the new immigration facility. Castle Garden was originally Castle Clinton, a fort built in 1811 on an artificial island off lower Manhattan. It was converted into a theater in 1833 and was later connected by landfill to the Battery. It served as an immigration center between 1855 and 1890, ceding that function to Ellis Island in the 1890s.

4 In 1952 a conservator treating the painting in preparation for its display in the Museum's exhibition New York Street Scene, 1852 found its nativist humor objectionable and painted over a whiskey bottle that Waugh had inserted in the back pocket of the young Irishman carrying a knapsack.

5 This analogy was suggested by Allen Feldman in "Gaelic Gotham: An Ethnographic Evaluation," in The Gaelic Gotham Report: Assessing a Controversial Exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (New York: New York Irish History Roundtable, 1997), pp. 26 -27.


The Bay and Harbor of New York c. 1853 -1855 Samuel B. Waugh (1814 -1885) Watercolor on canvas, 99 1/5 X 198 1/4 Gift of Mrs. Robert L. Littlejohn, 33.169.
Monumental painted panoramas, comprising individual sections sewn together, were a popular entertainment form for much of the nineteenth century. Produced on the same linen canvas used by theatrical set painters, they were typically unrolled within a stage proscenium, creating movable narratives that mesmerized audiences. In October 1849 Samuel B. Waugh's fifty-scene panorama The Mirror of Italy made its exhibition debut in Philadelphia before embarking on a tour to New York City and Boston. Sometime thereafter, the artist returned to the episodic painting, adding a dozen revised "chapters" to it. Under the name Italia, this expanded tableau (about eight hundred feet long) was shown at bookings around the nation, including a featured appearance in 1859 at New York City's New Hope Chapel just below 8th Street. A descriptive handbook accompanied Italia, identifying each of its sixty-two segments and attributing the project's genesis to "sketches taken by the artist during a residence of several years in Italy."¹ The Bay and Harbor of New York, the concluding scene of this "grand tour," depicted the homecoming of passengers to New York Harbor. Waugh recorded this vista from a point just above the Battery. The companion notes explain its contents: "On the left lies Castle Garden, and off the Battery, the Chinese Junk, Keying, which visited the United States in 1847. In the distance are Brooklyn, Governors Island, and Fort William; and on the right, an Emigrant Ship, discharging, while the wharf, in the fore-ground, is crowded with the passengers, their property, and friends." The painting's precise dating has been a matter of some confusion owing to Waugh's inclusion of the Keying, a teak-hulled junk from China (visible offshore, with conspicuous upswept ends), in the same composition as the ship discharging passengers and the line of immigrants filing into, or out of, Castle Garden. As the first vessel from the "Celestial Empire" to visit New York, the Keying met with great fanfare when it moored at the Battery in July 1847.² Its arrival presumably would have been fresh in Waugh's mind when he conceived The Mirror of Italy. The disembarkation vignettes, however, more likely associate the canvas with Waugh's later, enlarged panorama of 1854 -1855. In that case, artistic license probably accounts for his retention of the exotic Keying, which helped to emphasize New York's internationalism. It was only in 1855 that Castle Garden (previously an entertainment center) was converted into a new immigration depot.³ Here, Waugh recognizes the landmark's recent change in function. The foreground scene emphasizes the volume of human cargo offloading into New York by the mid-nineteenth century. In 1860 there were 105,123 immigrants admitted at Castle Garden, of whom 47,330 were Irish, 37,899 German, and 11,361 English. Unlike their predecessors, who were vulnerable to waterfront fraud and other abuses, "greenhorns" arriving on the piers near Castle Garden now benefited from police surveillance and the assistance of emigrant aid societies. The reforms in the landing experience at New York Harbor also may have been a factor in Waugh's choice of dockside subject. Through careful costuming, the artist authenticates the mix of nationalities and social classes both disembarking from ships and greeting travelers. The crowd contains a well-dressed element, although it is unclear whether these figures represent fashion-conscious New Yorkers or newcomers dressed in their Sunday best. Even though Eastern Europeans would not emigrate to the city in significant numbers until the later nineteenth century, a few passengers appear in the black garb and wide-brimmed hats traditionally worn by Jewish men. Most voyagers, however, reflect the predominantly Irish composition of immigrants streaming through Castle Garden in the years following the Great Famine. The ethnic prejudice faced by rural Irish entering this country is indicated in the trunk in the lower right labeled "Pat Murfy for Ameriky" and in the almost simian caricatures of the Irish farm boys attired in worn frock coats, peaked hats, and outmoded knee pants.⁴ Cluttered around the trunk are kitchen utensils typical of simple hearth-prepared meals. A shawled woman resting on the trunk as she gazes out at the harbor, with children on her lap and at her side, appears more poignant, the pose perhaps alluding to the Mise Eire figure symbolic of Ireland's bereavement over her exiles.⁵ Waugh, a Pennsylvania native, also painted romantic landscapes and portraits. His primary acclaim, however, rested on his panoramas based on an eight-year stay in Italy but produced largely in a studio he maintained at Bordentown, New Jersey. Waugh was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1845 and termed an "honorary" academician in 1847, just as the Mirror of Italy was nearing completion. His wife and children, most notably his son Frederick Judd Waugh, also pursued careers as painters. Waugh's 1854 - 1855 panorama remained in the family's possession until early in the twentieth century, when Harriet C. Bryant of West 47th Street purchased a number of its segments. She in turn sold The Bay and Harbor of New York segment to Mrs. Robert Littlejohn, who donated it to the Museum. Notes: 1 Waugh's Great Italia & [McDonnell's Voyage to Rome] & A Hand-Book Descriptive of the New Series of Italian Views. Painted by S. B. Waugh, Esq. in 1853, '54, and '55. From Sketches Taken by the Artist During a Residence of Several Years in Italy (Philadelphia, 1867), booklet in Museum Archives (acc. no. 33.169.3). Handbills explaining Waugh's earlier panorama are in the Harvard Theater Collection, Pusey Library, Harvard University. The Museum's booklet, though published later than the handbills, documents the ongoing tour of Waugh's Italia through the third quarter of the nineteenth century. A list of primary sources to both of Waugh's nineteenth-century Italian panoramas was supplied by Kevin J. Avery, an authority on American panorama paintings and then a research associate in the American Paintings and Sculpture Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a letter of January 24, 1988, Museum Archives. 2 During its stay of several months in New York harbor, the Keying proved a popular tourist attraction, with as many as four thousand people a day paying twenty-five cents to board her, and many more flocking to the viewing deck of Castle Garden to study her strange design and crew. Waugh may have intended to indicate that phenomenon in the distant flow of figures from Castle Garden, which most historians now read as immigrants newly registered at Castle Garden. See Norman Brouwer, "New York's Unusual Chinese Visitor & the Junk Keying," Seaport Magazine 14, no. 2 (Summer 1980): 18 -19. 3 By the late 1840s, Bedloe's Island, the traditional landing station for overseas arrivals, had become strained by the swelling numbers of incoming vessels to New York, prompting the need for the new immigration facility. Castle Garden was originally Castle Clinton, a fort built in 1811 on an artificial island off lower Manhattan. It was converted into a theater in 1833 and was later connected by landfill to the Battery. It served as an immigration center between 1855 and 1890, ceding that function to Ellis Island in the 1890s. 4 In 1952 a conservator treating the painting in preparation for its display in the Museum's exhibition New York Street Scene, 1852 found its nativist humor objectionable and painted over a whiskey bottle that Waugh had inserted in the back pocket of the young Irishman carrying a knapsack. 5 This analogy was suggested by Allen Feldman in "Gaelic Gotham: An Ethnographic Evaluation," in The Gaelic Gotham Report: Assessing a Controversial Exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (New York: New York Irish History Roundtable, 1997), pp. 26 -27.