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Old Trinity Church, Manhattan
Details
Boris Izrailevich Anisfel'd (1878-1973)
Old Trinity Church, Manhattan
signed and dated 'Boris Anisfeld/1925' (lower left)
oil on canvas
32¼ x 22½ (82 x 57.2 cm.)
Painted in 1925
Old Trinity Church, Manhattan
signed and dated 'Boris Anisfeld/1925' (lower left)
oil on canvas
32¼ x 22½ (82 x 57.2 cm.)
Painted in 1925
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist, late 1930s.
Private collection, Chicago.
By descent to the present owner.
Private collection, Chicago.
By descent to the present owner.
Further details
Paintings of city views are rare in Anisfel'd's oeuvre. Only a handful are known, including The City (Petrograd 1917), The City of Chicago, Illinois (date unknown), and the present painting, from 1925.
Anisfel'd is known to have had decidedly mixed views about great cities. He had spent much of his childhood in the countryside, and in America, he always contrived to have a summer retreat: at Stony Point up the Hudson when he was based in New York, and Central City Colorado, after he moved to Chicago in 1929. Like the Spanish poet García Lorca, who spent several months in New York at the close of the 1920s, he was appalled by the loud and frantic scrambling for gain he saw all around him. Yet without the city, he knew, there could be no Mariinsky Theatre, no Metropolitan Opera, no art market, and no living for Anisfel'd and his family.
This ambivalence is perfectly reflected in Old Trinity Church, one of the finest of his city paintings. It is at once Symbolist in conception, and fashionably Art Deco in execution. It is very much of its time, yet its subject matter resonates with us today. This old 19th century church, located at Wall Street and Broadway, must have impressed Anisfel'd with its durability in the face of the crushing economic forces of modern life.
We are grateful to Mr. Charles Chatfield-Taylor, B. Anisfeld's grandson and recognized expert on the artist, for his help cataloguing the present lot.
Anisfel'd is known to have had decidedly mixed views about great cities. He had spent much of his childhood in the countryside, and in America, he always contrived to have a summer retreat: at Stony Point up the Hudson when he was based in New York, and Central City Colorado, after he moved to Chicago in 1929. Like the Spanish poet García Lorca, who spent several months in New York at the close of the 1920s, he was appalled by the loud and frantic scrambling for gain he saw all around him. Yet without the city, he knew, there could be no Mariinsky Theatre, no Metropolitan Opera, no art market, and no living for Anisfel'd and his family.
This ambivalence is perfectly reflected in Old Trinity Church, one of the finest of his city paintings. It is at once Symbolist in conception, and fashionably Art Deco in execution. It is very much of its time, yet its subject matter resonates with us today. This old 19th century church, located at Wall Street and Broadway, must have impressed Anisfel'd with its durability in the face of the crushing economic forces of modern life.
We are grateful to Mr. Charles Chatfield-Taylor, B. Anisfeld's grandson and recognized expert on the artist, for his help cataloguing the present lot.