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Robert Torchia, “Allen Tucker/Madison Square, Snow/1904,” American Paintings, 1900–1945, NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/52446 (accessed November 21, 2024).

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Overview

Allen Tucker abandoned a career as an architect and became an artist in 1904. His early paintings such as Madison Square, Snow are indebted to the tonal impressionist style of his teacher at the Art Students League, John Henry Twachtman (American, 1853 - 1902). Representations of small urban parks seen from an elevated vantage point were popular among French impressionists such as Claude Monet (French, 1840 - 1926) and Camille Pissarro (French, born St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, 1830 - 1903). Their American counterparts Willard Leroy Metcalf (American, 1858 - 1925), Ernest Lawson (American, born Canada, 1873 - 1939), and Childe Hassam (American, 1859 - 1935) all produced similar views of New York.

Located between Madison and Fifth Avenues and extending from 23rd to 26th Streets, Madison Square Park had become a major commercial and entertainment area. It was especially noted for Stanford White’s Madison Square Garden, a popular concert hall, amphitheater, and roof garden built in 1889. There were a number of other iconic modern structures in the area, such as Daniel H. Burnham’s famous Flatiron Building.

Tucker deliberately avoided any clearly recognizable view of Madison Square Park and its urban environs. Reflecting the growing influence of Robert Henri’s realism, his rendition instead emphasizes the dramatic encroachment of the city’s looming skyline on the park and is less anecdotal than the works of many of his impressionist contemporaries.

Entry

Allen Tucker executed this painting in 1904, the year that he abandoned his career as an architect and decided to become a professional artist. The snowy setting, subtle tonal harmonies, and heavily textured paint surface of Madison Square, Snow reflect the influence of John Henry Twachtman (American, 1853 - 1902), Tucker’s former teacher at the Art Students League. It is an important early example of Tucker’s interest in tonalism, done well before he developed his mature expressionist style.

The winter cityscape depicts Madison Square Park, one of midtown Manhattan’s small urban oases. Composed from an elevated vantage point, the painting’s precedents include the bird’s-eye views of Paris produced by several of the French impressionists, such as the well-known Garden of the Princess (1867, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH) by Claude Monet (French, 1840 - 1926) and numerous paintings by Camille Pissarro (French, born St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, 1830 - 1903) from the last decade of his career. Tucker had certainly seen such French impressionist works during his extensive travels in Europe.

In the United States, Willard Leroy Metcalf (American, 1858 - 1925), Ernest Lawson (American, born Canada, 1873 - 1939), and Childe Hassam (American, 1859 - 1935) painted similar views, in which they represented the city’s public parks as genteel, bucolic places of refuge from an otherwise bustling environment.[1] Madison Square, Snow is less anecdotal and ingratiating than Hassam’s Madison Square, Snowstorm [fig. 1] or similar views by other American impressionists. Tucker’s approach to the urban park theme instead reflects the growing influence of the snow scenes of Robert Henri (American, 1865 - 1929), such as Snow in New York, and successfully combines the monochromatic, tonalist manner of Twachtman with the harsher realism of Henri.

Inspired in part by the French writer Charles Baudelaire’s notions of the painter of modern life, Tucker and other turn-of-the-century American painters were drawn to New York because of the many contemporary subjects the rapidly growing urban center provided. Madison Square had been officially designated a public space in 1847. Situated in one of the city’s most fashionable neighborhoods, between Madison and Fifth Avenues and extending from 23rd to 26th Streets, the park underwent a dramatic transformation around 1900 when it lost its quiet residential quality and became a major commercial and entertainment center. The area was especially noted for the presence of Madison Square Garden, a popular concert hall, amphitheater, and roof garden that was designed in a distinctive Moorish style by Stanford White and built in 1889. Its tower was surmounted by the bronze nude statue Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, born Ireland, 1848 - 1907), the dominant feature of Manhattan’s skyline.[2] Other significant buildings on the park’s perimeter included Henry Janeway Hardenbergh’s Western Union Building (1884), Napoleon Le Brun’s Metropolitan Life Insurance Building (1892), James Brown Lord’s Appellate Court Building (1900), and Daniel H. Burnham’s Flatiron Building (1902). Madison Square Park was also distinguished for its outdoor sculpture and was the site of Saint-Gaudens’s Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1881) as well as several other important memorials.[3]

Tucker’s rendition of Madison Square Park deliberately avoids any distinctive, clearly recognizable view of the park or its environs. Tucker instead represents the park as a vestige of nature engulfed by a rising tide of relentless urban development. The only visible sign of the park is a row of motley, bare trees that protrude through the snow, sandwiched between the foreground rooftops and the tall buildings in the background. Although snow was a favorite device for romanticizing the city and imbuing it with a picturesque quality, here the metropolis is rendered more objectively. The smoke and steam rising above the New York skyline manifests the dynamic, often disruptive emerging energies of the new century.

Robert Torchia

July 24, 2024

Inscription

lower left: A. Tucker / 04

Provenance

The artist [1866-1939]; by inheritance to his wife, Mrs. Allen Tucker [d. 1944]; The Allen Tucker Memorial, New York;[1] gift 1971 to NGA.

Associated Names

Tucker Memorial, Allen

Exhibition History

1972
Extended loan for use by Secretary Peter G. Peterson, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., 1972-1973.
1975
Extended loan for use by the Ambassador, U.S. Embassy residence, Dublin, Ireland, 1975-1978.
1979
Extended loan for use by Secretary G. William Miller, U.S. Department of Treasury, Washington, D.C., 1979-1980.
1981
Extended loan for use by Secretary Donald T. Regan, U.S. Department of Treasury, Washington, D.C., 1981.
1983
Extended loan for use by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, U.S. Embassy residence, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1983-1987.
1989
Extended loan for use by Secretary Louis Sullivan, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C., 1989-1993.
1995
Extended loan for use by Ambassador Jeonnone Walker, U.S. Embassy residence, Prague, 1995-1998.
2005
Extended loan for use by Secretary Margaret Spellings, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., 2005-2008.

Technical Summary

The painting is executed on a medium-weight, plain-weave canvas that was preprimed with a thick gray-white ground. The edges are cut with a sharp instrument right through impastos and brushstrokes, which shows that the painting was mounted sometime after its completion. It is now not exactly at its original dimension, although it does not appear that much is missing. The secondary support is a quarter-inch-thick piece of plywood that is painted dark brownish red on the reverse, to which an interleaf of a white-grounded canvas has been glued before mounting of the original support. This additional canvas can be seen at the top edge. The x-radiograph does not show an image on the interleaf canvas and shows very little in the way of artist changes. The paint is applied thickly, in direct impastoed brushstrokes, probably following a rudimentary drawing as the architectural forms are painted side by side, not overlapping each other. The infrared reflectography image suggests the presence of a drawing but does not confirm it.[1]

The painting is in good condition with only a small retouched fill in the upper-left corner and some significant retouching at all the edges except the top. From its light-green fluorescence under ultraviolet light, the thin, slightly discolored, and grimy layer of varnish is probably a natural resin.

Michael Swicklik

July 24, 2024

Bibliography

1992
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 370, repro.

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