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

This impressionistic view of Washington Square in winter, looking toward its namesake arch and the stately row of warm red-brick homes lining its northern perimeter, encompasses a glimpse of the bronze statue of Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi installed in the square in 1888, and the blurs of a horse-drawn sleigh and some stalwart pedestrians attempting to negotiate a landscape blanketed with snow.

While typical of the numerous picturesque studies inspired by Washington Square Park and its architecture, the painting is distinguished by its specificity of vantage point from the third-floor window of Katharine Branchard's boarding house, where artist Carton Moore-Park had improvised a studio. In the 1890s, Madame Branchard had assumed title to a run-down rowhouse at 61 Washington Square South, formerly maintained as a single-family residence.¹ She then converted the property into an inexpensive rooming house appealing to boarders pursuing dreams of success. Aware of Greenwich Village's renown as a precinct cordial to artists and writers struggling to launch their careers, Branchard also capitalized on Washington Square's allure as a historic address in the heart of New York's nascent Latin Quarter, which offered various options for low-cost housing.²

The painting's estimated date of creation, around 1913, is significant because it was during the years before World War I that Greenwich Village burst into full bloom as a bohemian stronghold and that Branchard's establishment received its celebrated baptism as "the House of Genius," reflecting the succession of creative, often eccentric tenants it sheltered on their way to fame. During Moore-Park's brief residence in the prewar years, fellow boarders included the aspiring poet Alan Seeger, destined to die in the battle of the Somme, and the illustrator-writer Rose O'Neill, better known for designing the Kewpie Doll. For painters aspiring to become professionals, however, such bargain-rate living arrangements -reminiscent of their rollicking student years -grew irksome, and many quickly exited the Village to lease space in the modern studio buildings on West 55th and 57th Streets, New York's latest magnets for artists.³

Moore-Park, who was born in New Brunswick, Canada, attended the Glasgow School of Art and subsequently settled in London, where his decorative, calligraphic technique was refined. His drypoints of animals, many conceived for children's books or demonstrating his passion for horse sports and zoology, attracted early critical praise for their economy of rhythmic line and bold, asymmetrical composition.⁴Upon arriving in New York, Moore-Park branched out into portraiture and figure painting and also investigated the media of pastels and aquarelles. His stay at Branchard's boardinghouse proved a brief layover on his way to securing entree into New York's established community of graphic and easel artists. Local directories record a series of later Fifth Avenue and midtown Manhattan addresses for the artist and list him as a "collector and connoisseur."

Notes:

1 Period newspapers sometimes identified landlady Katherine or Marie Branchard as a native of Switzerland who had run a boardinghouse in Syracuse, New York, before coming to Greenwich Village. Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and the writer O'Henry were among her better-known literary boarders. The house was razed in 1948; the Loeb Student Center of New York University now occupies the site.

2 Some of these newer accommodations pitched at artists had been purpose built: in 1879, for example, the thirty-three-unit Tuckerman (dubbed the Benedick) apartment house, featuring four studio suites on its top floor, opened at 80 Washington Square East to cater to bachelors of independent means. Transients of creative bent could also settle into the hotel tower incorporated into the recently built Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South at Thompson Street. Cheaper communal lodgings beckoned, however, in some of the earlier nineteenth-century townhouses edging the square's southern border that had been vacated by owners unnerved by the neighborhood's radical drift and claimed by enterprising landladies like Branchard, eager to reconfigure them as de facto arts colonies operated for a colorful but nonetheless paying clientele.

3 This pattern was observed as early as 1891 by the commentator C. M. Fairbanks: "The artist colony here [in Greenwich Village] has flourished for a few years, but already there is apparent an up-town tendency into what the men of the Latin Quarter have with some jealousy dubbed the 'Clique Quarter,' a region up about the southern boundaries of Central Park." Taking heed of the modern studio buildings newly erected in that vicinity, he noted by comparison that Washington Square South "has hardly been redeemed from the slums." C. M. Fairbanks, "The Social Side of Artist Life," Chautauquan 13 (September 1891): 748 -749.

4 See Museum Archives for abbreviated biographical listings of Moore-Park, including book titles featuring his signature book illustrations, culled from the standard dictionaries of artists. A useful summary of his career before his arrival in New York is found in Charles Hiatt, "The Work of Carton Moore Park," International Studio 12 (1900 -1901): 171 -179. Some references suggest that Moore-Park studied briefly with Edgar Degas.


Washington Square, Looking North c. 1913 Carton Moore-Park (1877 -1956) Oil on canvas, mounted on beaver board, 29 1/2 X 44 1/2 Gift of Howard Moore-Park, 76.83
This impressionistic view of Washington Square in winter, looking toward its namesake arch and the stately row of warm red-brick homes lining its northern perimeter, encompasses a glimpse of the bronze statue of Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi installed in the square in 1888, and the blurs of a horse-drawn sleigh and some stalwart pedestrians attempting to negotiate a landscape blanketed with snow. While typical of the numerous picturesque studies inspired by Washington Square Park and its architecture, the painting is distinguished by its specificity of vantage point from the third-floor window of Katharine Branchard's boarding house, where artist Carton Moore-Park had improvised a studio. In the 1890s, Madame Branchard had assumed title to a run-down rowhouse at 61 Washington Square South, formerly maintained as a single-family residence.¹ She then converted the property into an inexpensive rooming house appealing to boarders pursuing dreams of success. Aware of Greenwich Village's renown as a precinct cordial to artists and writers struggling to launch their careers, Branchard also capitalized on Washington Square's allure as a historic address in the heart of New York's nascent Latin Quarter, which offered various options for low-cost housing.² The painting's estimated date of creation, around 1913, is significant because it was during the years before World War I that Greenwich Village burst into full bloom as a bohemian stronghold and that Branchard's establishment received its celebrated baptism as "the House of Genius," reflecting the succession of creative, often eccentric tenants it sheltered on their way to fame. During Moore-Park's brief residence in the prewar years, fellow boarders included the aspiring poet Alan Seeger, destined to die in the battle of the Somme, and the illustrator-writer Rose O'Neill, better known for designing the Kewpie Doll. For painters aspiring to become professionals, however, such bargain-rate living arrangements -reminiscent of their rollicking student years -grew irksome, and many quickly exited the Village to lease space in the modern studio buildings on West 55th and 57th Streets, New York's latest magnets for artists.³ Moore-Park, who was born in New Brunswick, Canada, attended the Glasgow School of Art and subsequently settled in London, where his decorative, calligraphic technique was refined. His drypoints of animals, many conceived for children's books or demonstrating his passion for horse sports and zoology, attracted early critical praise for their economy of rhythmic line and bold, asymmetrical composition.⁴Upon arriving in New York, Moore-Park branched out into portraiture and figure painting and also investigated the media of pastels and aquarelles. His stay at Branchard's boardinghouse proved a brief layover on his way to securing entree into New York's established community of graphic and easel artists. Local directories record a series of later Fifth Avenue and midtown Manhattan addresses for the artist and list him as a "collector and connoisseur." Notes: 1 Period newspapers sometimes identified landlady Katherine or Marie Branchard as a native of Switzerland who had run a boardinghouse in Syracuse, New York, before coming to Greenwich Village. Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and the writer O'Henry were among her better-known literary boarders. The house was razed in 1948; the Loeb Student Center of New York University now occupies the site. 2 Some of these newer accommodations pitched at artists had been purpose built: in 1879, for example, the thirty-three-unit Tuckerman (dubbed the Benedick) apartment house, featuring four studio suites on its top floor, opened at 80 Washington Square East to cater to bachelors of independent means. Transients of creative bent could also settle into the hotel tower incorporated into the recently built Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South at Thompson Street. Cheaper communal lodgings beckoned, however, in some of the earlier nineteenth-century townhouses edging the square's southern border that had been vacated by owners unnerved by the neighborhood's radical drift and claimed by enterprising landladies like Branchard, eager to reconfigure them as de facto arts colonies operated for a colorful but nonetheless paying clientele. 3 This pattern was observed as early as 1891 by the commentator C. M. Fairbanks: "The artist colony here [in Greenwich Village] has flourished for a few years, but already there is apparent an up-town tendency into what the men of the Latin Quarter have with some jealousy dubbed the 'Clique Quarter,' a region up about the southern boundaries of Central Park." Taking heed of the modern studio buildings newly erected in that vicinity, he noted by comparison that Washington Square South "has hardly been redeemed from the slums." C. M. Fairbanks, "The Social Side of Artist Life," Chautauquan 13 (September 1891): 748 -749. 4 See Museum Archives for abbreviated biographical listings of Moore-Park, including book titles featuring his signature book illustrations, culled from the standard dictionaries of artists. A useful summary of his career before his arrival in New York is found in Charles Hiatt, "The Work of Carton Moore Park," International Studio 12 (1900 -1901): 171 -179. Some references suggest that Moore-Park studied briefly with Edgar Degas.