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1. Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, eds., Twentieth-Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature (New York, 1942), 1004.
2. Kunitz and Haycraft, Twentieth-Century Authors, 1004.
3. In his autobiography, Jerome recalled one of his father’s homecomings: "I was about ten, and my father had been away for five years. He came home carrying a fish on a string; in a casual way he asked about mother, adding that we could have fish for supper.” Jerome Myers, Artist in Manhattan (New York, 1940), 4.
4. Kunitz and Haycraft, Twentieth-Century Authors, 1004.
5. Ibid. Gustavus Myers (1872-1942) was an historian of the Progressive movement. Writing in the muckraking tradition of Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, Myers painstakingly exposed the iniquities in American society. His writings include The History of Tammany Hall (New York, 1901), History of the Great American Fortunes (Chicago, 1910), History of the Supreme Court of the United States (Chicago, 1912), and History of Bigotry in the United States (New York, 1943).
6. Jerome Myers Memorial Exhibition (exhibition catalogue). Introduction by Harry Wickey. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 22-May 29, 1941,5.
7. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 30.
8. Contemporary with Jerome’s paintings of the Lower East Side was Hutchins Hapgood’s book The Spirit of the Ghetto (New York, 1902). Hapguod’s account of life on the Lower East Side parallels Myers’ artistic vision in several ways. Both recorded the spiritual and cultural life of New York’s Lower East Side and found the Bowery more picturesque and significant than either Fifth Avenue or Broadway. Furthermore, neither man dwelled on the appalling living conditions found on the Lower East Side. Early studies dealing with the abject poverty of ghetto life include Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York, 1890) and Robert Hunter, Poverty (New York, 1904).
9. Prior to living in New York, the Myers family had lived in Virginia, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans.
10. Myers began scene painting in 1886 after brief employment as an assistant manager with a theatrical group. His most memorable work was done for the Old Opera House in New Haven. Referring to a scene which depicted a battlefield strewn with the dead and wounded, Myers wrote: “I am thankful I shall never have to look at it again.” (Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 15) Scene painting eventually led to the decorative interior painting of several New York mansions, a phase of Myers’ career which he later described as his “heavy baroque period.” (lbid.)
11. Royal Cortissoz, American Artists (New York, 1932), 70.
12. New York Sun, April 26, 1941.
13. New York Sun, April 26, 1941.
14. Class enrollment cards at the Art Students League indicate that Myers began classes in the fall of 1888. He appears to have taken his last class at the League in the fall of 1895.
15. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 18.
16. Christian Buchheit, Reminiscences (New York, 1956), 19.
17. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 19.
18. Wesley W. Stout, "Making the Grade," New York Globe, September 28, 1922.
19. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 20.
20. Myers wrote: “I have loved drawing for its own sake, without one addition of color or of a formal arrangement but as a communion between my subject and myself, with all its accidents of time and place, the interruptions that occurred like broken melodies, incompleted songs of the life I cared for …” Jerome Myers Papers. I am indebted to the late Mrs. Virginia Myers Downes for her kindness and generosity in allowing me to study the various documents pertaining to Jerome Myers.
21. "Artist in the Wilderness of New York," New York Herald Tribune, March 31, 1940.
22. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 22.
23. Myers, Artist in Manhattan,, 23.
24. Myers, Artist in Manhattan,, 23.
25. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 23.
26. The exact chronological development of Myers’ activities during this period is difficult to determine. Many dates referred to in his autobiography are inaccurate or contradictory. The book was written in 1940 and, as Jerome had few primary records from which to work, he had to rely upon his memory. As he admitted, “It is rather difficult to uncoil the tangle of details, many of them long lost.” Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 21.
27. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 26.
28. Ethel Klinck Myers was an excellent artist in her own right. She is noted, in particular, for her bronze statuettes, nine of which were exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show. In her unpublished memoirs, she wrote of her first meeting with Jerome: “one day at Connelly mansion [her first studio] I was talking to a little man who made pictures to illustrate insects, and we were talking about who we considered the coming artists of the day. When I mentioned Jerome Myers, he exclaimed, ‘Oh, I’ve known him for years. He used to have a studio where I lived on Fourteenth Street, but I never considered him a good artist there.’ He offered to take me to Jerome’s studio at Fifty-Ninth Street. He was a sly little man and sent me a card of introduction and told me I better take a lady friend. I promptly went alone but found Jerome out. In a few days I went again and stayed for coffee.” The ensuing events were also recorded by the future Mrs. Jerome Myers: “Marriage was the last thing in my mind, but in three months Jerome proposed to me. He said he didn’t have any money and maybe he never would have, but if I would take a chance with him he would love to marry me. I looked at him in astonishment and said, ‘But I am engaged to be married.’ He calmly said, ‘Well, think it over for a week and let me know.’ He had never been to my house and knew nothing about me. I thought it over for a week and decided I would marry him.” Jerome and Ethel Myers were married in 1905. (I am indebted to the late Mrs. Virginia Myers Downes and Mr. Barry Downes for making the papers of Ethel Myers available for my study.)
29. “At the Picture Shows,” New York Evening Mail, January 7, 1908.
30. George Luks as quoted in Bennard Perlman, The Immortal Eight (New York, 1962), 175.
31. Letter, Bernard Perlman to Ethel Myers, n.d. Jerome Myers Papers.
32. Bruce St. John, ed., John Sloan’s New York Scene (New York, 1965), 26.
33. William I. Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle (Ithaca, 1969), 129.
34. John Sloan Diary, 1950, 344. My sincere thanks to Helen Farr Sloan for allowing me to study materials in the John Sloan Trust.
35. In an undated copy of a letter from Ethel Myers to Bennard Perlman, the artist’s widow wrote: “I do know that Jerome never knew why he wasn’t included.” Ethel Myers Papers.
36. New York Evening Sun, March 16, 1910.
37. Ira Glackens, William Glackens and the Ashcan Group (New York, 1957), 131
38. Walt Kuhn, The Story of the Armory Show (New York, 1938). The American Painters and Sculptors was later incorporated as the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. See Milton Brown, The Story of the Armory Show (New York, 1963)
39. Myers discussed his role in the selection of Davies as president in his autobiography (Artist in Manhattan, 35). Barbara Rose wrote that it was Walt Kuhn who was responsible for Davies’ candidacy (American Art Since 1900, New York, 1967, 69). However, Milton Brown corroborated Myers’ recollection in his study of the Armory Show (The Story of the Armory Show, 41), as did Charles H. Morgan in George Bellows, Painter of America (New York, 1965) 151.
40. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 35.
41. Brown, The Story of the Armory Show, 61.
42. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 36. The same dilemma had faced previous generations of American artists. In 1878 the Society of American Artists suggested that American collectors consider the merits of their fellow countrymen rather than focus their collecting on contemporary European art. John Twachtman summed up the problem twenty years later when he warned a group of art students that “the American public will turn you down for second and third-rate foreign painters.” (Perlman, The Immortal Eight, 143)
43. The Eight (with the exception of Everett Shinn who did not exhibit) sold a total of only six works—three oil paintings by Henri, Lawson, and Prendergast; two drawings by Henri and Davies; and one etching by Sloan. Glackens, Luks, and Jerome Myers did not sell a single work.
44. Russell Lynes, “Whirlwind on Twenty-Sixth Street,” Harper’s Magazine, XXVIII, June, 1954, 67.
45. Guy Pane du Bois, “Painters and Sculptors Squabble,” Arts and Decoration, V, July, 1914, 354.
46. Jerome Myers Papers.
47. Jerome Myers Papers.
48. Morris Gilbert, “Portrait of An Artist,” New York World Telegram, February 22, 1940.
49. Myers described The End of the Walk in his autobiography: “The blond Jew sleeps on in his adopted land of the free, no Cossacks to terrify him, no sudden explosion, here to enjoy peace in a summer night, repose in the kindly Manhattan night.” Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 131. The artist also stated in his autobiography that “... if Rembrandt were to have seen my ‘End of the Walk,’ I like to believe that he would have opened a bottle of schnapps to toast the picture—or at least would have been considerate enough not to roast it.” Artist in Manhattan, 75.
50. Myers, Artist in Manhattan, 75
51. Harry Golden, You’re Entitle! (Cleveland, 1962), 279
52. Boris Bogen, "Born a Jew" in Autobiographies of American Jews (Philadelphia, 1965) 382.
53. Jerome Myers Papers.
54. Jerome Myers Papers.
55. Helen Farr Sloan interview with the author.
56. Meyer Berger, “About New York,” New York Times, April 20, 1940.
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