Scene on the East River with the Ferry "Queens"
(also exhibited as New York from the Long Island Shore), 1890
Charles Henry Miller (1842 -1922)
Oil on canvas, 33 X 66
Signed lower right: Chas. H. Miller
Gift of Mrs. Hiram C. Bloomingdale, 54.140

 

Depicted crossing the East River is the Queens County, built in 1859, one of four double-ended ferryboats active on the route between 34th Street and its docking station at Hunter's Point, Queens. Commuters going to Manhattan jobs rode the ferry, as did Manhattanites headed for a day at Long Island's racetrack, connecting at Hunter's Point to the Long Island Railroad. Competition from the opening of various rapid transit tubes and train tunnels under the East River, as well as the 1909 completion of the Queensboro Bridge, closed down this ferry line in 1925.¹

The artist, Charles Miller, wrote to the painting's first owner, Mr. Lyman G. Bloomingdale, that "the view is . . . seen by millions of New York citizens passing to and fro -from Queens -Brooklyn and Manhattan."² In the same letter, Miller related that the work, exhibited at the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago as New York from the Long Island Shore,³ was "one of a Metropolitan series of Old New York landmarks," including both significant Manhattan sites and views of Manhattan from other shores.

The distinctively tall structure on the Manhattan shore at the left is probably Youle's Shot Tower (see plate 16). The round turrets and long, narrow-windowed wall behind and slightly to the left of the ferry are part of the Blackwell Island penitentiary. The Algonquins called the island Minnehanock; when the Dutch bought it, they named it Varcken ("Hog") Eylandt. With the British takeover of New Amsterdam, the name changed to Perkins Island. In the late eighteenth century the Blackwell family took possession of the property, then sold it to New York City in 1828. Reflecting the presence of many public institutions, the name changed to Welfare Island until 1973, when the island was renamed in honor of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Today extensive upper- and moderate-income housing covers most of Roosevelt Island's 150 acres.

Charles Miller, trained as a doctor and financially independent, gave up medicine to become a painter in the mid-1860s, pursuing formal studies with Adolph Lier at the Bavarian Academy in Munich.⁴ By 1870 he had established a studio in New York City, where he was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1873 and a full academician in 1875. Two years later he joined the Society of American Artists, a group protesting the Academy's conservative exhibition policies, which excluded younger, innovative painters.

In contrast with his Manhattan views, many of Miller's scenes depict rural, agrarian Long Island. In an 1884 review, the art critic S. G. W. Benjamin described Miller's work as picturesque, which he defined as "whatever suggests the dramatic element . . . [and] the destiny of man." This quality, Benjamin maintained, was to be found in the older parts of the nation's urban centers as much as in its farms and small villages.⁵

Notes:

  1  Ferry service from Hunter's Point to Manhattan was restored in 1994, when New York Waterways opened a new terminal.

  2  Extract of a letter in the possession of the donor, who supplied a facsimile on April 26, 1954, for the Museum Archives.

  3  World's Columbian Exposition, Revised Catalogue, Department of Fine Arts (Chicago: W. H. Conkey, 1893), p. 73. Miller exhibited the painting at the National Academy of Design. Maria Naylor, ed., The National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1861 -1900 (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1973), vol. 2, p. 630.

  4  Although Munich later played host to many young American artists desiring formal academic training, Miller was described by Eliot Clark as one of the first to be schooled in this Bavarian city. Eliot Clark, History of the National Academy of Design, 1825 -1953 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), p. 172.

  5  S. G. W. Benjamin, "An American Landscape-Painter," Magazine of Art 7 (1884): 95 -96.