Brooklyn Bridge

Ernest Lawson’s Brooklyn Bridge is a romantic homage to the great suspension bridge that is one of New York City’s most important symbols. The view, looking west from Brooklyn, shows the moon rising over Manhattan, a dim mass in the distance. The illumination along the bridge’s span is echoed by the twinkling lights on the far shore and the sparkling waters of the East River. Cut off at the bottom edge of the image, the Fulton Ferry's terminal building, with its ornate tower and sloping mansard roofs, emphasizes the height and grandeur of the bridge. Beyond the prosaic brick and slate-gray colors of the buildings, the image is painted in saturated blues with highlights of pink and gold. The paint surface is heavily worked in Lawson’s characteristic manner. Highlights in loose strokes create the scintillating jewel-like effects for which the artist had earned a reputation.

When the Brooklyn Bridge, the longest suspension bridge ever built, opened in 1883 after more than a dozen years of planning and construction, it was hailed as a triumph of futuristic engineering and a symbol of American optimism and practical energy. Many of Lawson’s artistic contemporaries portrayed the Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol of modernity. In this work, however, the romantic moonlit setting and the architecture of the bridge and nearby buildings evoke time’s passage. The Brooklyn Bridge had eclipsed the ferry as the most efficient way to cross from Brooklyn to Manhattan, but both the pointed gothic openings in the bridge’s piers and the Second Empire-style narrow windows and soaring roofs of the Ferry House represent the taste of the 1860s, with its penchant for European-derived historical references. By the time Lawson probably painted this work, the style of these structures long had been outmoded in New York, a city of modern skyscrapers that reflected America’s headlong rush into the future.

From the time he settled in Manhattan in 1898, Lawson looked to its waterways for his favorite themes. The Hudson, Harlem, and East rivers appear repeatedly in paintings created in the following two decades, though rarely at night. In using a rich blue color scheme for this subject, Lawson may have born in mind the well-known precedent of the “nocturnes” of London’s Thames River and its bridges painted by the nineteenth-century American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler and the more recent nocturnes of New York painted by his former teacher, Julian Alden Weir. Lawson’s sparkling highlights and vibrant, open brushwork, however, were derived from impressionism, the painting of everyday scenes in casual, cropped compositions and with rapid brushstrokes to capture the transience of modern life. Lawson’s style, often lyrical in mood and expressive in paint application, represents the final maturation of American impressionism in the 1910s and 1920s, when it was favored by conservative critics searching for an up-to-date art free of the “insanities” of modernist “isms.” Brooklyn Bridge demonstrates Lawson’s vigorous technique, fascination with New York as a city of change, and sympathy with his closest professional associates, a group of progressive artists who first exhibited together in 1908 as The Eight, later derisively dubbed the Ashcan school because they dedicated their art to portraying the gritty reality of modern urban life.

Ernest Lawson Retrospective, ACA Galleries, New York, New York, November 27–December 24, 1976, no. 37.

Masterworks in American Art from the Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, April 27–September 12, 1985. 

A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 21–June 21, 1987. [exh. cat.]

American Impressionists, Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, October 6–December 31, 1989.

Selections from the Collections, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 6–December 6, 1992.

Visions of America: Urban Realism 1900–1945, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (organizer). Venues: Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, January 5–March 3, 1996; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico, April 5–June 2, 1996; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, June 30–August 18, 1996. [exh. cat.]

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 1997.

Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920 (The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 15, 1999; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 10, 1999–May 7, 2000 (in modified form). [exh. cat.]

Figures and Forms: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 9–July 9, 2000.

American Classics: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 26–September 1, 2002.

Paris-New York, aller-retour. Une Modernité américaine en formation, 1875–1940. Oeuvres des collections de la Terra Foundation for the Arts et des Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens (Paris-New York, Roundtrip. American Modernism in the Making, 1875–1940. Works from the Terra Foundation for the Arts and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, September 15–November 30, 2002. [exh. cat.]

A Narrative of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 13–October 31, 2004.

Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, NY and Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, IL (organizers). Venues: National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, February 9–April 5, 2007; Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China, April 30–June 30, 2007; Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China, April 30–June 30, 2007 (Shanghai presentations ran concurrently); The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia, July 23–September 9, 2007; Guggenheim Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain, October 15, 2007–April 27, 2008. [exh. cat.]

The Eight and American Modernisms, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, and Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (organizers). Venues: New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, March 6–May 24, 2009; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 6–August 23, 2009. [exh. cat]

Industrial Sublime: Modernism and the Transformation of New York's Rivers, 1900–1940, Hudson River Museum (organizer); Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York, October 5, 2013–January 19, 2014; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, March 20–June 22, 2014. [exh. cat.]

Icon of Modernism: Representing the Brooklyn Bridge, 1883–1950. Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia (organizer); Venue: Georgia Museum of Art, September 17–December 11, 2016 [exh. cat.]

Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Art Institute of Chicago and Terra Foundation for American Art (organizers). Venue:  Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China, September 28, 2018–January 6, 2019.   [exh. cat.]

 

Hunter, Sam and John Jacobus. American Art in the 20th Century. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1973. Ill. no. 66, p. 41.

Ernest Lawson Retrospective. Essay by Dennis Anderson. (exh. cat., ACA Galleries). New York: ACA Galleries, 1976. Text p. 35 (checklist).

The Magazine Antiques 125 (April 1984): 704. Ill. p. 704 (color).

Atkinson, D. Scott et al. A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art. Edited by Terry A. Neff. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987. Pl. T-152, p. 261 (color).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text pp. 99–100; fig. 101, p. 99 (black & white).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text pp. 99–100; fig. 101, p. 99 (black & white).

Southgate, M. Therese. "The Cover." The Journal of the American Medical Association 267:7 (February 19, 1992): 897. Text p. 896; ill. cover (color).

Visions of Urban America. (exh. cat., The Butler Institute of American Art). Youngstown, Ohio: The Butler Institute of American Art, 1996. Cat. no. 36, p. 45.

Brooklyn Bridge, Ernest Lawson. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 1997. Ill. (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1999. Text pp. 14–15, 25 (checklist); fig. 7, p. 14 (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1999. Text pp. 14–15, 25 (checklist); fig. 7, p. 14 (black & white).

Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation. (exh. cat., The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia). New York, NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago, IL: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. (Russian version). Ill. p. 93 (color).

Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in the USA: 300 años de innovación. (exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum Bilbao). New York, NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago, IL: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. (Spanish version). Ill. p. 125 (color).

Kennedy, Elizabeth et al. The Eight and American Modernisms. (exh. cat., New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT and Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2009. Text pp. 83, 175 (checklist); Ill. p. 82 (color).

Kennedy, Elizabeth. "The Eight and American Modernisms" American Art Review 21.2 (March–April 2009): 118–127. Ill. p. 121 (color).

Southgate, M. Therese. The Art of JAMA III: Covers and Essays from the Journal of the American Medical Association. Chicago, Illinois: American Medical Association, 2011. Text p. 82; ill. opposite p. 82 (color).

Jensen, Kirsten M. and Bartholomew F. Bland, eds. Industrial Design: Modernism and the Transformation of New York's Rivers, 1900–1940. (exh. cat., Hudson River Museum). New York: Fordham University Press, 2013. Text, p. 15; ill. cat. 34, p. 127 (color).

Gillespie, Sarah Kate, Kimberly Orcutt, Janice Simon, and Meredith Ward. Icon of Modernism: Representing the Brooklyn Bridge, 1883–1950. (exh. cat., Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia). Athens, Georgia: Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 2016. Text p. 16; p. 107, cat. no. 15; ill. p. 107, cat. no. 15 (color).

Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865-1945. (exh. cat. Shanghai Museum with Art Institute of Chicago and Terra Foundation for American Art). Shanghai: Shanghai Museum, 2018. Text p. 102; ill. p. 102 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text pp. 179–181; fig. 4, p. 179 (color).