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Lot Essay
The present work relates to Joseph Stella's celebrated oil Brooklyn Bridge (1919-20) in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.
Now synonymous with his career, the Brooklyn Bridge first fascinated Stella shortly after immigrating to New York from Italy in 1896. The artist later reflected, "For years I have been waiting for the joy of being capable to leap up to the subject--for Brooklyn Bridge had become an ever growing obsession ever since I had come to America...it impressed me as the shrine containing all the efforts of the new civilization of America--the eloquent meeting of all forces arising in a superb assertion of their powers, in apotheosis. To render limitless the space on which to enact my emotions, I chose the mysterious depth of night." (as quoted in B. Haskell, Joseph Stella, New York, 1994, p. 206)
Barbara Haskell explains, "He brought to the subject not only an immigrant's desire to celebrate the wealth and awesome grandeur of the New World, but a poet's wish to wrest mythic significance from everyday reality...Stella elevated the bridge into a spiritual symbol at once majestic and monstrous...To convey his mystic vision, Stella juxtaposed a palette of resonant blues, reds, and blacks against radiant silver-gray tones. Chromatically, the result alluded not only to light filtering through a stained-glass window but to spiritual illumination emerging from darkness." (Joseph Stella, p. 85)
Upon the Yale painting's debut, it was heralded as "the most successful piece of American modernism," with Hamilton Easter Field praising the work as "the apotheosis of the bridge. It is not the bridge seen without, from the East River, but from within, from the central passage way which has been left for us pedestrians...The painting to me is more real, more true than a literal transcription of the bridge could be." (Joseph Stella, p. 101)
With the Brooklyn Bridge thus established as his signature subject, Stella continued to return to his fascination with the modern marvel in various media throughout his lifetime. His depictions of the bridge can also be found in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Newark Museum in New Jersey, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Now synonymous with his career, the Brooklyn Bridge first fascinated Stella shortly after immigrating to New York from Italy in 1896. The artist later reflected, "For years I have been waiting for the joy of being capable to leap up to the subject--for Brooklyn Bridge had become an ever growing obsession ever since I had come to America...it impressed me as the shrine containing all the efforts of the new civilization of America--the eloquent meeting of all forces arising in a superb assertion of their powers, in apotheosis. To render limitless the space on which to enact my emotions, I chose the mysterious depth of night." (as quoted in B. Haskell, Joseph Stella, New York, 1994, p. 206)
Barbara Haskell explains, "He brought to the subject not only an immigrant's desire to celebrate the wealth and awesome grandeur of the New World, but a poet's wish to wrest mythic significance from everyday reality...Stella elevated the bridge into a spiritual symbol at once majestic and monstrous...To convey his mystic vision, Stella juxtaposed a palette of resonant blues, reds, and blacks against radiant silver-gray tones. Chromatically, the result alluded not only to light filtering through a stained-glass window but to spiritual illumination emerging from darkness." (Joseph Stella, p. 85)
Upon the Yale painting's debut, it was heralded as "the most successful piece of American modernism," with Hamilton Easter Field praising the work as "the apotheosis of the bridge. It is not the bridge seen without, from the East River, but from within, from the central passage way which has been left for us pedestrians...The painting to me is more real, more true than a literal transcription of the bridge could be." (Joseph Stella, p. 101)
With the Brooklyn Bridge thus established as his signature subject, Stella continued to return to his fascination with the modern marvel in various media throughout his lifetime. His depictions of the bridge can also be found in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Newark Museum in New Jersey, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.