The Picture Collection and the American Scene

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The Picture Collection and the American Scene

 Romana Javitz was a gifted writer and made even annual reports interesting and persuasive. Here she is writing on the events of 1933, which saw a turn towards all things American:

“Although as usual the roots of the requests were in the news item and the current fad, an analysis of the year’s work with the public shows a marked shift towards concentration on the American scene. In former years, designers asked for foreign sources and old period designs. To-day, the American artist finds his own background one of flowing richness hardly as yet tapped. Scenes of early American historical events, early views of American cities, the beginnings of the great industries, every graphic element of the natural resources. Ohio flatboats, Charleston balustrades, corncribs, cowboys, gold mining, cotton, the “Don’t tread on me” flag, filling stations, samplers, and silos- were used as a basis for fresh design. Numerous public projects assigned to artists the problem of representing the American scene pictorially. In the research for factual bases for the mural, illustration, or miniature model, artists discovered the glamour and robust variety of American history. The privilege of borrowing pictures and taking them where the work was being done, brought the resources of the library into direct contact with the created design. A well-known American artist now painting a P.W.A. mural commented on the Picture Collection, stated that its development and growth were of importance to him because the form of his conceptions was often fixed by the kind of material available in its files.”

 




"Automat Aristocrat" Dan Freeman for the Public Works of Art Project. Etching, 1934.

                                                     NYPL Picture Collection. 




"Brooklyn Bridge". Harry Leroy Tasket for the Public Works of Art Project.
Etching. 1933. NYPL Picture Collection. 

“The many artists hired under the Public Works Art Project to produce designs for the decoration of public buildings turned to the Library for the needed factual data. These murals demanded research, often requiring the assignment of a research worker for each dozen artists. This served to introduce the possibilities in the use of the Picture Collection to a large group of artists not previously familiar with its resources. 

The registration records indicate an overwhelming change in the public. There is today a greater use of the Collection by free-lance designers and the “gallery” painter and sculptor than, as formerly, by the commercial art agencies. (Artists of the caliber of Ruth Reeves, textile designer, Albert Johnson, scenic artist, Gaston Lachaise, sculptor, and Diego Rivera, fresco painter, regularly availed themselves of these library facilities.) 

In this connection it was most flattering to have the National Society of Mural Painters in April move that a vote of thanks be tendered to the New York Public Library for “such signal service to artists” as is offered them through the Picture Collection.”

Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1934. Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. New York. Volume 38, pp. 373-375.

 Words on Pictures: Romana and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection. edited by Anthony T. Troncale. New York: Photo | Verso Publications, LLC, 2020.   ISBN 978-1-7346409-0-8 (hardcover)  Identifiers ISBN  978-1-7346409-1-5 (ebook)

 

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