Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

A native of Petersburg, Virginia, Jerome Myers moved to New York City in 1886, after working as a sign painter in Baltimore. He initially supported himself by painting theatrical scenery, as well as acting. He studied art at Cooper Union and the Art Students League. Myers is an artist often associated with Robert Henri and his students, the artists who became known as the Ashcan School. Although Myers did not participate in the groundbreaking exhibition of The Eight at New York’s Macbeth Gallery, he was instrumental in the organization of the 1913 Armory Show, and worked closely with Henri on the selection of American artists.

There are significant similarities in the work of Myers and that of the Ashcan artists, but there are also striking differences. His subject matter was closely attuned to theirs, with an emphasis on the less glamorous, grittier side of New York. But whereas the Ashcan artists concentrated on rendering New York in dark, moody and melancholic tones, Myers chose an exuberant palette and a much more positive point of view in the scenes he painted. Children are prevalent in Myers’ work—his obvious affection for them, and his belief in them for the future—are central to his concerns. No one ever seems quite unhappy in Myers’ art, although there is a sense of crowdedness and dutiful work; there is also a feeling of communal harmony. For the children the world remains a joyous and carefree wonderland.

Myers was a chronicler of New York’s Jewish immigrant neighborhoods of the early twentieth century, and, as an American, he was an important link to the European-born Jewish immigrant artists of the following generation (including Moses and Rafael Soyer and Abraham Walkowitz).

In East Side Market he depicts the bustling shopping crowds of the Lower East Side in a palette based in rich blues and violets, punctuated with splashes of other tones throughout (a mustard-colored apron in the foreground, a red scarf, an orange blouse and the brown cabinet at right). Many of the faces in the watercolor are highly individuated, while others remain unpainted, effectively capturing the essence of a crowd.

The focus in East Side Market is on the people; in Italian Fête, 115th Street, Myers concentrates as much on the surrounding buildings as he does on the individuals. Riotous color abounds: the primary colors of the foreground figures’ clothing, and the brilliant, fiery reds and oranges of the market stall behind them. The tenement buildings in the background and at right convey once again the density of the city, but these can’t contain the whimsical sense of the street party, especially captured in the figures of youth, focused on the young girl at foreground center.