ABOUT THE ARTIST - GRANT HOLCOMB ARTICLE

Jerome Myers was born in Petersburg, Virginia on March 20, 1867, one of five children born to Abram and Julia Hillman Myers. The early years of the Myers family were ones of “desperate poverty.”    Abram Myers provided little paternal guidance and, apparently, even less financial security for his family. Possessing what one son termed “an incorrigible roving spirit,”  the elder Myers traveled to many foreign countries and, later, journeyed to California where, as a 'Forty-Niner,' he acquired a gold mine which he subsequently lost.

Myers began his formal art education in 1887, one year after his arrival in New York.   He enrolled in evening courses at Cooper Union while he earned his living as a painter of signs and interior scenes during the day. Backyard (Figure 1), dated 1887, indicates that Myers spent his few spare hours painting local scenes. The painting represents a view of the Myers' backyard in New York and apparently is one of the earliest examples of an unidealized urban scene in American art.

Jerome spent approximately one year at Cooper Union before entering the Art Students League where he once again studied at night while working during the day as a photo-engraver at the Moss Engraving Company. At the League, Myers studied under George de Forest Brush, a popular and competent academician. Brush's preference for form over color and his idealization of form in imitation of classical art were typical academic characteristics. He found artistic experimentation faulty and, in an appropriately conservative vein, maintained: "We must not run after new things. We must find out what the masters know."

Myers often abandoned his studies at the League in order to sketch the city and its environs. One such sketching trip resulted in his first sale of an oil painting:

The drawings of the nineties are, perhaps, more significant than the early paintings in revealing the artist's method of working and his aesthetic viewpoint.  They indicate Myers' spontaneous method of capturing a moment observed by the artist. This method contrasts to the more labored, academic approach to drawing. Also, the drawings, more than the early oil paintings, indicate the extent to which Myers responded to the life around him. Jerome carried a nine-by-eleven inch sketch pad as he walked the streets of New York.

In 1895 Myers went to work in the art department of the New York Tribune. Within a year, the frugal artist was able to save enough money to travel to Paris in order to see "the reputedly wonderful Mecca of art for students of the whole world.''   He purchased a new pair of shoes for the pilgrimage and headed for the French capital by steamer. He settled in the Latin Quarter where he shared an attic room with the American sculptor, Solon Borglum. Jerome met old friends he had known in New York and observed the effects of Parisian life on young, aspiring American artists:

"Some were becoming boulevard artists, to strut on Montparnasse and meet the celebrities at the famous Cafe du Dome. Others were in their element, with a career right ahead of them. Still others were the pathetic ruins of American students who had lingered too long, artists in limbo, a tattered fringe of derelicts to whom a new American was a godsend because he meant a meal."

Myers visited the renowned museums and galleries of Paris. At the Louvre, he studied the masterpieces which, to him, "were not revelations-just other examples of masters I had already known in New York.'' He enjoyed his brief Paris sojourn and respected the city's heritage and national glory. Yet, he preferred "the quiet little brook to the mighty river"   and returned to America convinced that his destiny as an artist lay with the people for whom he cared most-the immigrants of the Lower East Side.

1908 was a momentous year for Jerome Myers and for American art. Myers received his first one-man exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in January of that year. His twenty-five paintings and his group of drawings received favorable commentary from the critics, one reviewer describing Myers as "an artist of genuine power..." Macbeth followed the Myers show with an exhibition entitled "The Eight" which marked a signal moment in the battle against academic art. Because conditions were unfavorable for the general exhibition of works by newer artists, a group of eight American painters, led by Robert Henri, challenged the "pink and white painters''   of the National Academy of Design. In addition to Henri, the group consisted of John Sloan, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, George Luks, Ernest Lawson, Arthur B. Davies, and Maurice Prendergast. The inclusion of the last three painters indicates that the group had not been organized on the basis of style but rather on the common feeling among the artists that an alternative to academic exhibitions was needed.

The work of Henri, Sloan, Glackens, Shinn, and Luks paralleled in style and technique the work of Jerome Myers. Like Myers, they looked to the contemporary scene for their thematic statements and based their muted palettes on the restricted color schemes of Velasquez, Rembrandt, Hals, Goya, and the early Manet. Henri was solely responsible for selecting the Eight and, as he was a friend of Jerome's, it is difficult to understand the exclusion of Myers from the group. There are several interpretations of Henri's action. Bennard Perlman believes that the exclusion of Myers was due to the fact that neither Henri nor Myers knew each other very well at the time the decision was made.   On the other hand, Bruce St. John contends that "The fact that Myers was exhibited by Macbeth made his omission from The Eight almost a deliberate rejection On the part of Henri ...."

This view is supported by William I. Homer in his definitive study of Robert Henri. Homer stated that Henri's exclusion of Myers was a conscious decision based primarily upon Henri's opinion that Jerome's work was too sentimental.   John Sloan supported this theory of deliberate exclusion when he stated: "Jerome Myers would and should have been a member. But he was too much Henri's age to adopt the position of disciple which Henri demanded from his friends.'' However true these various interpretations may be, it must be remembered that Jerome had a one-man exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery early in 1908 and, perhaps, Henri simply decided to include artists in his exhibition who had not been given many opportunities to exhibit in New York. In any case, it appears that Myers, himself, never knew the specific reason for his exclusion from this key exhibition.

Another landmark in the struggle against academic art was the Exhibition of Independent Artists held in New York in 1910. Once again, Sloan and Henri were the leaders of this progressive venture. This time, however, Jerome Myers joined the 'rebellion.' The exhibition was the first, open, non-juried show ever held by, and for, American artists. Henri stated the purpose of the exhibition: "The fact is that there are a great many good pictures painted in New York which are never exhibited. We aim to place these pictures before the public.''   Following the exhibition of the Eight by two years, the Exhibition of Independent Artists became known as "the second salvo for freedom in art.''   Myers exhibited seven of his drawings and one painting and received several favorable reviews. Furthermore, the exhibition allowed Myers to establish closer ties with those forces which nurtured the development of progressive art in America.

In many ways, Myers took the lead in creating new opportunities for the independent artists. In 1911, he, along with Wait Kuhn and Elmer MacRae, organized an exhibition of "The Pastellists" with the hope that the pastel medium would gain greater popularity with the general public. Although it failed in this respect, it did help to pave the way for one of the most significant exhibitions ever held in Americathe Armory Show of 1913. After the closing of the pastellists' exhibition, Myers, Kuhn, MacRae, and Henry Fitch Taylor began discussing the need for a new, large-scale exhibition. The first formal meeting was held in Myers' studio on West 42nd Street. There, among paintings depicting the immigrants of New York City, the organization known as the American Painters and Sculptors was established. But as Walt Kuhn pointed out: "The group of four men who first set the wheels in motion had no idea of the magnitude to which their early longings would lead.''

The organization continued many of the policies developed by the 1910 Exhibition of Independent Artists. However, a new ingredient was added to the Armory Showmodern European art. (Later, many artists, including Myers, stated that the inclusion of contemporary European art destroyed the original intention of the exhibition which was to exhibit the work of American artists who were ignored by the National Academy.) It was the task of the four men who conceived the idea of an independent exhibition to generate enthusiasm among their fellow artists. Myers recommended John Sloan, George Bellows, Everett Shinn, Maurice Prendergast, and Edward Kramer for membership. His selections underscored his concern that the exhibition serve the interests of native American artists, especially the work of the realists. Myers continued to devote his time and energy to the project, and became one of three men elected to the executive committee.

The first note of discord emerged when APS president-elect J. Alden Weir resigned because he did not want to be held responsible for any friction that might develop between the newly-formed organization and the National Academy. Arthur B. Davies was chosen to succeed Weir and he immediately began to orient the show towards European art; in the process, he alienated many American artists. Ironically, it was Jerome Myers who was instrumental in convincing Davies to accept the APS presidency.

Thus it was that I, an American art patriot, who painted ashcans and the little people around them, took part in inducing to become the head of our association the one artist in America who had little to do with his contemporaries, who had vast influence with the wealthiest women, who painted unicorns and maidens under moonlight. What I did not know was Davies' intense desire to show the modern art of Europe in America. But through his indefatigable energy, and the financial support he secured, he changed what was to have been an exhibition of American art into the great exhibition of foreign art that made the Armory Show so memorable. Our first idea of an all-American show had broadened far beyond the horizon.

The course that Davies eventually pursued first became evident in the selection of the Committee on Domestic Exhibits. His influence was decisive in creating a committee sympathetic to European modernism. As Milton Brown has stated, Davies' action represented a conscious exclusion of the men who supported the realist mode in American art.

Finding their original intentions betrayed and discovering that a strict financial account was never kept, a group of American painters consisting of Myers, Henri, Sloan, Luks, Bellows, du Bois, Jonas Lie, and Leon Dabo resigned from the Association. The resignation of Myers ended "a year of innocent effort''   in one of the monumental events in the history of American art. Although he was one of only a few men who devoted an entire year exclusively to the work of the Armory Show, his efforts and hopes were to be shattered in the end. He later referred to the exhibition as "The great American betrayal.''

Jerome Myers' active participation in the major art organizations and exhibitions during the opening years of the twentieth century contributed greatly to the development of art in America. His paintings of this period are of equal interest and significance to students of American art. As we have seen, the artist began painting and drawing the unglamorous areas of the city, especially the Lower East Side, at an early date. This early work is a statement of sympathy and respect for the unpretentious lives of a city's inhabitants. All aspects of life on the Lower East Side appealed to Myers, from the daily transactions in the marketplace to the festive religious processions observed in the Italian neighborhoods.

Myers discovered that the energetic, often-times frenetic, pace of East Side life was to be found particularly in the marketplace where the immigrants purchased or peddled their wares in the crowded city streets. The well-composed Calico Sellers (Fig. 6) and East Side Study (Rivington Street) (Fig. 7), as well as the characteristic scenes, Evening Glow (Fig. 8) and Ghetto Market (Fig. 9), depict the daily routines of the East Side in which the women took their own baskets to the market and went from stall to stall procuring the necessary breads, vegetables, dairy products and meats. Myers painted similar tableaux in his travels through Europe, but he always preferred the ghetto markets of New York to their Parisian counterparts. When the immigrants "merge here with New York," he wrote, "something happens that gives vibrancy I didn't get in any other place.''

Although Myers painted many scenes of the marketplace throughout his career, he, like most of the city painters of the time, recorded the more leisurely moments of urban life. The innumerable city piers were often places of refuge, especially during the hot summer evenings. East River Pier (Fig. 10) and the remarkably beautiful End of the Walk (Fig. 11) are poetic statements of repose and solitude. Here, the children watch passing boats and play while their parents discuss various issues of the day or merely escape the turmoil of the city in quiet slumber. The glowing, muted colors and the emphasis on the horizontal planes of the canvases reaffirm the themes of tranquility and silence. The palette, as well as the subject matter, indicates Myers' interest in the work of Rembrandt, the one great master upon whom Myers relied for artistic and spiritual guidance.

The Tambourine exemplifies the importance of music to the children on the Lower East Side. It also illustrates Myers' deep feeling for the children of this area who became perpetual sources of inspiration for the artist. In fact, it seems that the joys of childhood somehow sheltered him from the more sordid aspects of life on the East Side. He once wrote that "the happiness of children, their number and their well being amply made up for the parent's privation.''   (Perhaps Myers' preoccupation with themes of youthful abandon is explained by the lack of such merriment during his own childhood.)

Jerome's paintings of children at play are pictures of fancy as well as fact. That is, the children usually possess a 'picture-book' quality. They are always clean and healthy and, whether they are running in the dirt or dreaming by a pier, are dressed in their Sunday best or, as John Sloan once said, in pinafores and pantaloons.   Such cleanliness would rarely be found in the dingy tenement districts of the Lower East Side. However, youngsters were depicted in this manner in many children's books published in the nineteenth century. Kate Greenaway's illustrations, for example, exemplify many of the same qualities employed by Myers: flat, unmodeled forms, delicate, soft colors, and little, if any, illusionistic space. However, this flat, decorative quality, which often appears in the paintings of Jerome Myers, may denote the artist's awareness of the Nabis and, in particular, the early paintings of Pierre Bonnard whose work he may have seen in Paris. Bonnard's early tonal compositions, heightened by small dots of higher-keyed colors are similar to Jerome's oil paintings. Furthermore, thematic similarities are noted in their common interest in everyday city scenes. Both artists were sensitive observers of life and infused prosaic reality with a poetic charm.

One month before his death in 1940, Jerome commented upon the changes that had taken place in New York over the past fifty years:

“Something is gone. Something is missing. I say to myself, 'It is the warmth of human contact; that's what it is. It is gone. Men and women and children hide behind the walls of their homes.' New Yorkers no longer live in the open.”

Although disturbed by this trend, Jerome's artistic commitment to city life remained steadfast and constant throughout his career. Although he explored various themes and techniques in his work from time to time, he never diverted significantly from the path he first pursued as an artist at the turn of the century.

Jerome Myers captured the rich flow of life on the Lower East Side from the marketplace to the pier; he expressed the basic character of the people from childhood to old age. The humane and dignified spirit found in his portraits of city life was deep and true. It was both as an artist and as an activist in art organizations that he made a significant contribution to the development of twentieth-century American art.