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

When New York City emerged from the Great Depression in 1941, William Palmer left to accept simultaneous appointments upstate as artist-in-residence at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and director of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute's School of Art in Utica, a position he held until his retirement in 1973.¹ His departure left a gap in the metropolitan art community because by 1940 Palmer was a reigning specialist in mural painting, noted for both his depth of practical experience with and his historical knowledge of this challenging art form.

Palmer had honed his skills at fresco painting during a year's study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Fontainbleu, France, in 1927, where the methods of the modern French master Puvis de Chavannes informed instruction. New York City, however, was the primary laboratory where Palmer's expertise developed. An Iowa native, Palmer had left America's heartland in 1924 to study at the Art Students League, placing himself under the formative influences of such legendary teachers as Kenneth Hayes Miller, Thomas Hart Benton, and Boardman Robinson. He later returned to the league, assuming instructional responsibilities there from 1936 to 1941. Official administrative positions and memberships held during the 1930s attest to the artist's increasing authority as a muralist. In 1933 he was elected to the National Society of Mural Painters; in 1935 he became director of the Mural Department of the Beaux-Arts Institute; in 1938 he provided advice on murals as a participant in the Collaborative Council of the New York World's Fair. The following year he assumed the supervisor's position for the mural department of the New York City Division of the WPA Federal Art Project.

Concurrent with these professional involvements, much of Palmer's own art production had centered on mural commissions. In the late 1920s he designed murals, decorative furnishings, and scenic paintings for private homes as well as for several theatrical and institutional clients. After 1929 the plummeting economy largely eradicated this source of income, but the New Deal's succession of relief programs for artists re-energized mural making to Palmer's benefit. Notable among his WPA -sponsored projects were The Development of Medicine (1934 -1938), an ambitious eight-segment mural cycle conceived for the newly constructed Queens General Hospital, and several other regionalist American scenes developed for post-office walls in Washington, D.C.; Arlington, Massachusetts; and his native state of Iowa.

New York Amusements, together with a pendant scene titled New York Transportation, most likely dates from 1933 -1934, when Palmer was participating in the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a federally subsidized pilot initiative to gather decorative program proposals for public buildings.² In operation for only six months before its transformation into the WPA Fine Arts Program, the PWAP generated more than 15,600 works by 3,749 affiliated artists nationwide. Regional committees subsequently awarded commissions based on designs submitted in open competitions. Many, including Palmer's two studies, were never realized beyond conceptual renderings.

The intended placement of Palmer's painting is unknown, although its theme, and that of the associated sketch, seem compatible with a theater, recreational arcade, or transportation facility providing commuter access to public amusement areas.³ Using low-keyed colors, the artist depicts in whimsical cross section a stack of densely trafficked urban attractions. A crush of couples swaying to band music and a few seated onlookers inhabit a subterranean cabaret, probably inspired by the covert speakeasies that flourished in New York during Prohibition. At street level, crowds queue for a theater spectacle promising love, mystery, and "great casts of 500 girls and boys in person." Above, searchlights, flickering signs, distant skyscraper towers, and the festooned contours of a roller coaster lure patrons inside a celestial play zone featuring such attractions as "a Leap of Death" and a whirling swing ride.

Palmer's handling of figures is similar to the work of contemporary muralist Edward Laning, another student of Kenneth Hayes Miller's at the Art Students League. The playful mood, urban content, and spatial treatment of the scenes also evoke a striking springtime tableau of Washington Square that Palmer painted as a four-panel folding screen around 1929.⁴ Around the same time he painted New York Amusements, Palmer was developing Midwestern scenes as a category of pictures, prompted in part by his respites on Lake Ontario and in his hometown, Des Moines, during the early 1930s. These trips resulted in a subgroup of "amusement" paintings depicting summer lakeside pleasures and, later, golfing, a favorite recreation of Palmer's.

Notes:

1 Palmer's career as an arts administrator, teacher, and practicing artist is summarized in Howard D. Spencer, William Palmer: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue (Wichita, Kans.: Wichita Art Museum, 1982.) Palmer's archives, deposited at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica, are a rich source of biographical material. Other references for the artist are compiled in the Museum Archives. The painter also enjoyed a fifty-five-year association with the former Midtown Galleries on East 57th Street, which featured Palmer's work in numerous solo and group exhibitions from its inception in 1932 until his death.

2 The painting and its mate came to the Museum in June 1934 through a deposit initiated by the PWAP, administered through the Whitney Museum of American Art. Palmer's involvement in the various incarnations of WPA's art program can be tracked in Patricia E. Harris and Gladys Pena, For a Permanent Public Art: WPA Murals in the Health and Hospitals Corporation's Collection, exhibition catalogue (New York City: Tweed Gallery, 1988 -1989). See, too, commentary on Palmer in the exhibition catalogue A New Deal for Public Art: Murals from Federal Work Programs (Bronx: Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1993 -1994).

3 Palmer's companion painting New York Transportation (acc. no. L1226.1), using the same three-layered compositional conceit, depicts the vivid hubbub of Times Square at its busiest. The multiple levels of transit shown include the square's underground subway station, the roads above clogged with walkers, cars, trucks, and double-decker buses, and the El running above this midtown congestion. Outcroppings of skyscrapers, water towers, buildings under construction, and other roof lines occupy the picture's upper section.

4 The Washington Square screen, rendered in a brighter springtime palette and cited as being in the collection of Mrs. William C. Palmer, has been exhibited periodically. It was featured in the Nassau County Museum of Art's American Realism Between the Wars: 1919 -1942 (1994), plate 7, p. 55.


New York Amusements c. 1933 -1934 William C. Palmer (1906 -1987) Tempera on artist's board, 33 1/4 X 20 1/8 Permanent deposit, Public Works of Art Project through the Whitney Museum of American Art, L1226.1
When New York City emerged from the Great Depression in 1941, William Palmer left to accept simultaneous appointments upstate as artist-in-residence at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and director of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute's School of Art in Utica, a position he held until his retirement in 1973.¹ His departure left a gap in the metropolitan art community because by 1940 Palmer was a reigning specialist in mural painting, noted for both his depth of practical experience with and his historical knowledge of this challenging art form. Palmer had honed his skills at fresco painting during a year's study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Fontainbleu, France, in 1927, where the methods of the modern French master Puvis de Chavannes informed instruction. New York City, however, was the primary laboratory where Palmer's expertise developed. An Iowa native, Palmer had left America's heartland in 1924 to study at the Art Students League, placing himself under the formative influences of such legendary teachers as Kenneth Hayes Miller, Thomas Hart Benton, and Boardman Robinson. He later returned to the league, assuming instructional responsibilities there from 1936 to 1941. Official administrative positions and memberships held during the 1930s attest to the artist's increasing authority as a muralist. In 1933 he was elected to the National Society of Mural Painters; in 1935 he became director of the Mural Department of the Beaux-Arts Institute; in 1938 he provided advice on murals as a participant in the Collaborative Council of the New York World's Fair. The following year he assumed the supervisor's position for the mural department of the New York City Division of the WPA Federal Art Project. Concurrent with these professional involvements, much of Palmer's own art production had centered on mural commissions. In the late 1920s he designed murals, decorative furnishings, and scenic paintings for private homes as well as for several theatrical and institutional clients. After 1929 the plummeting economy largely eradicated this source of income, but the New Deal's succession of relief programs for artists re-energized mural making to Palmer's benefit. Notable among his WPA -sponsored projects were The Development of Medicine (1934 -1938), an ambitious eight-segment mural cycle conceived for the newly constructed Queens General Hospital, and several other regionalist American scenes developed for post-office walls in Washington, D.C.; Arlington, Massachusetts; and his native state of Iowa. New York Amusements, together with a pendant scene titled New York Transportation, most likely dates from 1933 -1934, when Palmer was participating in the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a federally subsidized pilot initiative to gather decorative program proposals for public buildings.² In operation for only six months before its transformation into the WPA Fine Arts Program, the PWAP generated more than 15,600 works by 3,749 affiliated artists nationwide. Regional committees subsequently awarded commissions based on designs submitted in open competitions. Many, including Palmer's two studies, were never realized beyond conceptual renderings. The intended placement of Palmer's painting is unknown, although its theme, and that of the associated sketch, seem compatible with a theater, recreational arcade, or transportation facility providing commuter access to public amusement areas.³ Using low-keyed colors, the artist depicts in whimsical cross section a stack of densely trafficked urban attractions. A crush of couples swaying to band music and a few seated onlookers inhabit a subterranean cabaret, probably inspired by the covert speakeasies that flourished in New York during Prohibition. At street level, crowds queue for a theater spectacle promising love, mystery, and "great casts of 500 girls and boys in person." Above, searchlights, flickering signs, distant skyscraper towers, and the festooned contours of a roller coaster lure patrons inside a celestial play zone featuring such attractions as "a Leap of Death" and a whirling swing ride. Palmer's handling of figures is similar to the work of contemporary muralist Edward Laning, another student of Kenneth Hayes Miller's at the Art Students League. The playful mood, urban content, and spatial treatment of the scenes also evoke a striking springtime tableau of Washington Square that Palmer painted as a four-panel folding screen around 1929.⁴ Around the same time he painted New York Amusements, Palmer was developing Midwestern scenes as a category of pictures, prompted in part by his respites on Lake Ontario and in his hometown, Des Moines, during the early 1930s. These trips resulted in a subgroup of "amusement" paintings depicting summer lakeside pleasures and, later, golfing, a favorite recreation of Palmer's. Notes: 1 Palmer's career as an arts administrator, teacher, and practicing artist is summarized in Howard D. Spencer, William Palmer: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue (Wichita, Kans.: Wichita Art Museum, 1982.) Palmer's archives, deposited at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica, are a rich source of biographical material. Other references for the artist are compiled in the Museum Archives. The painter also enjoyed a fifty-five-year association with the former Midtown Galleries on East 57th Street, which featured Palmer's work in numerous solo and group exhibitions from its inception in 1932 until his death. 2 The painting and its mate came to the Museum in June 1934 through a deposit initiated by the PWAP, administered through the Whitney Museum of American Art. Palmer's involvement in the various incarnations of WPA's art program can be tracked in Patricia E. Harris and Gladys Pena, For a Permanent Public Art: WPA Murals in the Health and Hospitals Corporation's Collection, exhibition catalogue (New York City: Tweed Gallery, 1988 -1989). See, too, commentary on Palmer in the exhibition catalogue A New Deal for Public Art: Murals from Federal Work Programs (Bronx: Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1993 -1994). 3 Palmer's companion painting New York Transportation (acc. no. L1226.1), using the same three-layered compositional conceit, depicts the vivid hubbub of Times Square at its busiest. The multiple levels of transit shown include the square's underground subway station, the roads above clogged with walkers, cars, trucks, and double-decker buses, and the El running above this midtown congestion. Outcroppings of skyscrapers, water towers, buildings under construction, and other roof lines occupy the picture's upper section. 4 The Washington Square screen, rendered in a brighter springtime palette and cited as being in the collection of Mrs. William C. Palmer, has been exhibited periodically. It was featured in the Nassau County Museum of Art's American Realism Between the Wars: 1919 -1942 (1994), plate 7, p. 55.