Washington Square
1900
Paul Cornoyer (1864 -1923)
Oil on canvas, 18 X 24
Signed lower left: Paul Cornoyer
Gift of Mrs. Farrow Harrow, 49.29

 

Washington Square, at the base of Fifth Avenue, emerged in the Victorian era as one of New York City's most fashionable neighborhoods. Projecting dignified calm and cosmopolitan charm, the square drew favorable comparisons to similar patrician precincts in nineteenth-century London and Paris. To Henry James, born on nearby Washington Place, Washington Square (where his grandmother lived) had "a riper, richer, more honorable look than any of the other ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare -the look of having something of a social history."¹

Originally a marshland drained for use as a potter's field and public gallows in the late eighteenth century, Washington Square underwent its upscale metamorphosis in the mid-1820s, when the area was converted into a military parade ground and subsequently reconfigured as an eight-acre public park, complete with fountain and intersecting pedestrian paths. In 1837 New York University established its headquarters on the square's east border. Affluent downtowners soon gravitated to this newly developed section of Greenwich Village, moving into the stately Federal-style townhouses constructed at the park's perimeter. By the century's end, a monumental arch designed by Stanford White and built from Tuckahoe marble dominated the northern edge of Washington Square. Largely financed by the well-heeled homeowners who lived on the square, this imposing structure replaced a temporary portal erected in 1889 to commemorate the centennial of George Washington's inauguration as the nation's first president.

Washington Square Park proved a subject of special appeal for painters influenced by the aesthetics of late nineteenth-century Impressionism. The French-trained artist Paul Cornoyer, noted for his atmospheric cityscapes, recorded the square's handsome architecture and genteel street life in a series of oils produced at the turn of the century. Working outdoors, he sought to capture the subtle effects of seasonal light and climatic conditions on the park and its encircling residences. Here, Cornoyer suggests the warm autumnal glow of late-afternoon sun illuminating the square's distinctive brick row houses. The famous arch, portrayed from an oblique angle, gleams against the gathering shadows of evening. In the foreground, pedestrians stroll casually through the park, some lingering at benches. The elongated silhouettes of the park's trees coax the eye upward to the leafy, sun-dappled branches that canopy the common and which, through the effect of the artist's loose brushwork, seem to rustle under the play of a gentle wind.

A nostalgic impulse may have prompted Cornoyer's homage to Washington Square, for as the new century unfolded, this aristocratic preserve was undergoing a dramatic transition. By the 1890s, various economic and demographic changes had conspired to trigger the flight of upper-class families from Greenwich Village: much of the district's housing stock had grown dilapidated, real estate values and per capita income began to plummet, local church congregations started to migrate north, and slum tenements and drab factories were encroaching the side streets running east and south of Washington Square. An intriguing international shabbiness descended on the southern border of Washington Square with the arrival of predominantly Italian immigrants and bohemian newcomers, who staked claim to the transient lodging houses and subdivided flats created by the recent outflight of concerned homeowners. Despite these developments, however, Washington Square North remained the fortress of such "old guard" holdovers as the Rhinelanders, the Van Rensselaers, the Delanos, and the Joneses, preserving its reputation as a ceremonial stage for the display of "cleanliness, good citizenship, and self-respect," according to a contemporary columnist for Harper's Magazine.² Not surprisingly, prospects of the square looking north, featuring the tidy facades of these proudly kept residences as well as the impressive contours of the Washing-ton Memorial Arch, were preferred vantage points for late nineteenth-century landscape painters. The ethnic pushcarts and disorderly lines of drying laundry visible to the south would inspire the generation of urban realist painters who succeeded them.

Notes:

  1  Henry James, Washington Square (New York: Random House, Modern Library, 1950), p. 22.

  2  Thomas A. Janvier, In Old New York (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1888), p. 148. Janvier's comments were subsequently published in Harper's Magazine.