William Glackens
William Glackens | 1870–1938 | Central Park, winter c.1905 | Oil on canvas | 63.5 x 76.2cm | George A Hearn Fund 1921 (21.164) | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Photograph courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Central Park, winter c.1905
William Glackens’s (1870–1938) early career was as a newspaper illustrator in Pennsylvania. After he spent a year in Paris, Glackens returned to work as an illustrator in New York. He gained recognition as a painter in the early 1890s with a painting of the Brooklyn Bridge exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy.
Central Park, winter c.1905 is typical of Glackens’s use of strong contrast, localised subjects and ‘Renoiresque’ brushwork. It depicts children at play in an urban setting where nature is controlled and organised into parklands. This presentation of nature is in dramatic contrast to the rural landscapes of his contemporaries, John Twachtman and Theodore Robinson.
