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

Long practiced as a sport in Holland and Scotland, ice skating developed as a popular pastime in the United States after the Civil War. The lakes and ponds incorporated into urban parks of the period played an important role in the spread of the sport and proved ideal for the new skate, invented in 1850, which provided the wearer with greater control and speed. Skating in Central Park began in December 1858, when part of the unfinished lake south of the Ramble was flooded and froze, beginning a social revolution that reinforced the democratic ideas of landscape designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who had conceived the park as an arena for instilling concepts of beauty and order in those who visited it.¹ For women, whose exercise had previously been limited to ladylike promenades, skating not only presented an opportunity for vigorous yet graceful movement but also offered a new kind of freedom for social encounters in an approved setting.

The novelty of "ice preserved day after day in good order and order preserved day after day on good ice" attracted the interest of thousands of skaters, thereby stimulating the rapid improvement of every aspect of ice skates.² Better skates and the park's new twenty acres of ice led to enormous popularity for the sport. Very soon, skating clubs for the affluent sprang up all over the city, leaving Central Park Lake to the less prosperous. For some, however, just the cost of transportation to the park put skating there out of the realm of possibility.³

When the ice was hard enough for skating, a red ball would be hoisted from a bell tower on Vista Rock, where Belvedere Castle stands today. The site's attractions included calcium reflectors for night skating and temporary warming huts at lakeside.⁴ Artists were quick to respond to the pictorial possibilities of this new sporting resort, which challenged them to record the gliding motion of the colorfully clad skaters traversing the lake. John O'Brien Inman, perhaps influenced by his exposure to nocturnes during a twelve-year European sojourn from which he had returned in 1878 (the year he executed this painting), chose to depict this activity at night. Beneath the moonlight, skaters crisscross the lake against a background of the Terrace north of the Mall, with Bethesda Fountain looming at the lake edge.

Inman was the son of the artist-portraitist Henry Inman, with whom he studied. He traveled through the South and West, executing portraits, and periodically returned to New York, where he was an associate of the National Academy of Design.⁵

Notes:

1 M. M. Graff, Central Park -Prospect Park: A New Perspective (New York: Greensward Foundation, 1985), p. 79.

2 Quotation from Tenth Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, for the Year Ending December 31, 1866 (New York: Wm. C. Bryant, 1867), p. 32.

3 Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 230.

4 Henry Hope Reed, Central Park: A History and a Guide (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972), p. 74.

5 Inman's exhibition record also includes floral pieces and other still lifes, landscapes inspired by trips to the Adirondacks, and various works based on twelve years spent in Europe. For additional information see Carolyn B. Wilkinson, "John O'Brien Inman," Magazine Antiques (November 1998): 722 -727.


Moonlight Skating -Central Park, the Terrace and Lake 1878 John O'Brien Inman (1828 -1896) Oil on canvas, 34 1/2 X 52 1/2 Signed lower right: J. O'B. Inman Anonymous gift, 49.415.2
Long practiced as a sport in Holland and Scotland, ice skating developed as a popular pastime in the United States after the Civil War. The lakes and ponds incorporated into urban parks of the period played an important role in the spread of the sport and proved ideal for the new skate, invented in 1850, which provided the wearer with greater control and speed. Skating in Central Park began in December 1858, when part of the unfinished lake south of the Ramble was flooded and froze, beginning a social revolution that reinforced the democratic ideas of landscape designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who had conceived the park as an arena for instilling concepts of beauty and order in those who visited it.¹ For women, whose exercise had previously been limited to ladylike promenades, skating not only presented an opportunity for vigorous yet graceful movement but also offered a new kind of freedom for social encounters in an approved setting. The novelty of "ice preserved day after day in good order and order preserved day after day on good ice" attracted the interest of thousands of skaters, thereby stimulating the rapid improvement of every aspect of ice skates.² Better skates and the park's new twenty acres of ice led to enormous popularity for the sport. Very soon, skating clubs for the affluent sprang up all over the city, leaving Central Park Lake to the less prosperous. For some, however, just the cost of transportation to the park put skating there out of the realm of possibility.³ When the ice was hard enough for skating, a red ball would be hoisted from a bell tower on Vista Rock, where Belvedere Castle stands today. The site's attractions included calcium reflectors for night skating and temporary warming huts at lakeside.⁴ Artists were quick to respond to the pictorial possibilities of this new sporting resort, which challenged them to record the gliding motion of the colorfully clad skaters traversing the lake. John O'Brien Inman, perhaps influenced by his exposure to nocturnes during a twelve-year European sojourn from which he had returned in 1878 (the year he executed this painting), chose to depict this activity at night. Beneath the moonlight, skaters crisscross the lake against a background of the Terrace north of the Mall, with Bethesda Fountain looming at the lake edge. Inman was the son of the artist-portraitist Henry Inman, with whom he studied. He traveled through the South and West, executing portraits, and periodically returned to New York, where he was an associate of the National Academy of Design.⁵ Notes: 1 M. M. Graff, Central Park -Prospect Park: A New Perspective (New York: Greensward Foundation, 1985), p. 79. 2 Quotation from Tenth Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, for the Year Ending December 31, 1866 (New York: Wm. C. Bryant, 1867), p. 32. 3 Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 230. 4 Henry Hope Reed, Central Park: A History and a Guide (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972), p. 74. 5 Inman's exhibition record also includes floral pieces and other still lifes, landscapes inspired by trips to the Adirondacks, and various works based on twelve years spent in Europe. For additional information see Carolyn B. Wilkinson, "John O'Brien Inman," Magazine Antiques (November 1998): 722 -727.