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Victory
Arch at Madison Square |
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This monument, conceived during World War I both to spur enlistment in and patriotic support for America's military efforts overseas and to memorialize New York City's war dead, became mired in committee politics long enough for the November 1918 armistice to have ended the war. Accordingly, the structure was transformed into a municipal Victory Arch, using temporary materials and a design by architect Thomas Hastings (1850 -1929). The project took form with all the speed earlier denied it, and was completed in time for the triumphant homecoming of New York's 27th troop division in late March 1919. Subtlety was not the concern of such grand civic gestures. Modeled after the ancient Arch of Constantine, the arch featured tripartite construction and an honor court displaying allegorical figures of Peace, Justice, Power, and Wisdom. Relief panels commemorated important battles, war service organizations, and the contributions of American industries, such as shipbuilding and munitions manufacture. Rising to a stunning height of 100 feet, the white archway's ample form straddled 125 feet of Madison Square at the intersection of Broadway, 24th Street, and Fifth Avenue. The purposeful siting probably reminded many New Yorkers of a similar arch, also made of plaster and wood, erected at this location in 1899 to salute Admiral George Dewey's victory over the Spanish at Manila Bay in 1898. Like its predecessor, the Victory Arch enlisted volunteer talent from the National Sculpture Society and was constructed with the expectation that it would be rebuilt in some permanent form. However, just as the earlier "imperishable" monument had failed to materialize when subscriptions lagged and Dewey's popularity ebbed, plans for the World War I memorial erupted in controversy over the commission's choice of artist and the proposed iconography. As debate escalated over the necessity of perpetuating this "Altar of Extravagance," as Fiorello La Guardia branded the project in 1919 when campaigning for the presidency of the Board of Aldermen, the arch joined New York City's growing registry of demolished commemorative structures.1 The production of such ambitious tokens of civic power, thanksgiving, and virtue challenged artists to record these short-lived embellishments to the cityscape. Painters were particularly alert to the fleeting compositional impact of such landmarks on their settings and also appreciated their gleaming white bravado, invariably effaced by urban pollutants. Jane Peterson, trained in Paris and Madrid, preserved her impression of Madison Square's Victory Arch as part of a larger pictorial chronicle of the city's patriotic activity and appearance during the World War I era.2 For this painting, she combined energetic brushwork with a luminous palette in a style that fused her firsthand knowledge of French Impressionism, Fauvism, and Post-Impressionism, and which paid debt to her studies with painter Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida. A widely traveled artist who moved fluidly through international art circles, Peterson maintained ties to New York City as an occasional resident and instructor at the Art Students League.3 Victory Arch at Madison Square, acquired by the donor from Peterson's estate, dates from the artist's period of involvement in the city's postwar recovery, possibly from the summer of 1919, when she leased an atelier in the Sherwood Studio Building on West 57th Street. Notes: 1 The politics that embroiled the Madison Square Victory Arch project, and New York City's subsequent efforts to commemorate World War I through a permanent monument, are analyzed by Michele H. Bogart in "A Loss of Memory: The New York City World War I Memorial," in her excellent book Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890 -1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 271 -292. It is usually written that the arch was conceived by Mayor John F. Hylan and, in spite of the impermanent materials employed in its fabrication, cost eighty thousand dollars to build. Because Hylan believed that monuments should be financed by public contributions, he dispatched twenty thousand members of the city politic and police reserves to facilitate the collection of funds for the Victory Arch. 2 Peterson's World War I -related scenes of New York City ranged from depictions of its gala Flag Day processionals to scenes of the somber work of rolling bandages at the Red Cross Center on Fifth Avenue. She also produced a series of portraits of prominent actresses who were participating in the "Stage Women's War Relief." 3 Peterson's connections with New York City, and with its World War I preparedness and victory efforts, are noted in An Itinerant Spirit: The Early Works of Jane Peterson, exhibition catalogue (New York: Hirschl and Adler Galleries, 1995). The standing monograph on the artist is J. Jonathan Joseph's Jane Peterson: An American Abroad, intro. Patricia Jobe Pierce (Boston: privately printed, 1981). |
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