Jerome Myers: The Ash Can Artist of the Lower East Side

Myers enjoyed a degree of success in his 1906 Macbeth show as well as with the Society of American Artists for Sloan noted in his diary on April third 1906 that when he called upon Jerome that day Myers told him he sold two works at Macbeth’s as well as an additional one at the Society show, a sentiment echoed in the New York Times on April fifteenth which reported that Jerome enjoyed the distinction for garnering the opening sale at the Society in addition to selling “three other East Side pictures within the past fortnight, one of which is the well-remembered ‘The Shrine, Mulberry Street.’” And Myers’ friend and collector George Acheson also wrote on March twenty third to inform Jerome that he was attempting to interest a young couple in purchasing one of two small oils Jerome had lent to him for this purpose; following up on March twenty eighth with news the couple decided to acquire a Myers pastel instead, adding, “I suppose it behooves me, now that you are becoming the fashion, to try to get my hands on something for myself.” For his part, Jerome seems to have taken success in stride. An interesting charcoal and white chalk Self-Portrait he drew on brown paper that year [fig. 65] depicts him somber faced, bushy mustache and dark hair set off against a face with deep-set eyes and arched brows, appearing far more serious than his thirty nine years would suggest. Perhaps Myers’ earnestness reflected his awareness of a growing importance both in the art world and as a soon-to-be parent. Jerome had recently banded together with fifteen other artists, important figures including Impressionists Winslow Homer, Robert Reid and Willard Metcalf as well as all the future members of The Eight, to form a new watercolor, pastel and lithograph society in protest against the exclusionary and conservative policies of the American Water Color Society that rejected several of Sloan’s etchings as too vulgar for display. The new organization planned a large exhibition for that fall without any jury and all works to be hung “on line,” places on the wall to be allotted by drawing numbers from a hat. The bold uncertainty of organizing this new venture occurred at the same time as the National Academy of Design and the Society of American Artists, two of America’s most prestigious arts organizations, merged and as Myers’ dealer, William Macbeth, relocated to newer, splashier quarters at 450 Fifth Avenue “where the sunlight is so brilliant that the skylights have to be screened on the ordinarily clear day.” Coupled with Myers’ awareness of impending parenthood, it is no surprise he portrayed himself in a pensive mood. Jerome continued to send work to tried-and-true exhibitions, showing A North River Recreation Pier in the spring show at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and a painting of an Italian religious procession at the new Macbeth Gallery where the New York Times pronounced it “a most attractive picture, whether considered abstractly as a rich mosaic of fine forms and colors, or regarded more intimately as a collection of appealing human types.” This quote well may refer to Myers’ large oil, a canvas measuring 25 ½ inches by 30 1/8 inches, titled Italian Procession [fig. 66] which, though undated, echoes the darker tonalities of A North River Recreation Pier and floats the reds, yellows, pinks and whites seen in the clothing the figures wear and the banners they carry across an otherwise dusky canvas surface in a manner reminiscent of the mosaic tesserae noted by the Times. The appealing human types the Times referred to in its article of 26 May were given extensive coverage in the newspaper’s edition of July first under the effusive headline, “Life on the East Side His Art Inspiration, Why Jerome Myers Unlike Most of His Brethren of the Brush and Crayon Chooses to Spend His Summer in the Metropolis. A Ramble Though His Favorite Haunts with Mr. Myers and Some of the Humor and Pathos It Revealed.” Remarking how “unusual for an artist to deliberately stay on the island of Manhattan through the months of July and August, as Jerome Myers is doing this year, working in the quarters of the town that most people are supposed to flee from in hot weather,” the Times highlighted Myers’ insistence on painting “the facts of life,” refusing to paint people or locations ordinarily deemed as “pleasant” merely to please the art-buying public.